THE WEAKENING
It happened on the ninth day after the battle.
Roger collapsed in the training yard.
Not dramatically. Not in the way of stories where people fall in ways that communicate the significance of the moment. He simply went down, one moment standing, the next on one knee with his hand pressed to his injured side and his face doing something it never did.
Showing pain.
I was at the opposite end of the yard and I felt it through the bond before I saw it, a sharp cold drop, the quality of his presence changing in a way that made my wolf surge forward.
I was across the yard in seconds.
Della was there before I finished crossing it, which told me she had been watching, which told me she had been expecting something.
"How long?" she said to him.
He looked at her with the expres
