Jace
I should have stopped an hour earlier.
I knew it then and I knew it now, standing in the muddy yard of the smallest inn I had ever seen with Kaida Hawkins sagging against my chest and her lips the colour of a bruise. The rain had stopped an hour ago but the damage was done — a day of soaking cold on top of four days of hard riding, and her wolf had not been strong enough to hold it off.
That was the thing that had finally made me turn off the trail.
Werewolves ran hot. Their blood ran faster and warmer than a human’s, their bodies burned through cold the way a good fire burned through green wood — reluctantly, but thoroughly. It took genuine sustained cold to bring a wolf down this way.
Kaida had gone down anyway.
I had noticed the trembling first, an hour back. Told myself it w
