Raven’s POV
My legs stopped working, or at least it's the only explanation I can think of for what was happening.
Not from the blood loss, not from the power I’d burned through, not from anything physical at all. They just stopped, the way the body sometimes overrides everything else when the mind encounters something it genuinely cannot process, when the gap between what is and what was supposed to be becomes so wide that forward motion requires a bridge you haven’t built yet.
Jax ran into my back.
“Raven.” His hands caught my shoulders. “What—”
“Look.” The word came out barely formed, more breath than sound. “Look at the clearing.”
He looked. He saw Ronan. He saw the assembled Veil members in their dark clothing, arranged in a wide circle around the old pack ground, hands raised, v
