Alaric's POV
I couldn't get the sight of her collapsing out of my head.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it again. Her face had drained of color, her hand had clawed at her chest, and her eyes had gone wide and unseeing as she fell straight into my arms.
She had weighed almost nothing when I carried her back to her room. Her head had lolled against my shoulder, and her breath had been so shallow that I had pressed my ear to her chest twice on the stairs just to make sure her heart was still beating.
So I wasn't sleeping. I was walking the perimeter of the estate at three in the morning instead, with my boots crunching softly against the gravel path and my wolf pacing restlessly beneath my skin.
The moon was high, but the woods beyond the boundary wall seemed darker than they should
