I did not allow myself to be afraid. This was different from not being afraid. The fear was present, specific, and entirely reasonable given the available information. I simply did not allow it to speak for me, which was a discipline I had been practicing since I was nine years old in an Ashcroft pack house where fear was the only response available and also the most dangerous one.
The healer’s station was ready. The Ashdale wolves had integrated with Jasper’s security in the quiet professional way of wolves who understood their assignment. Sera had commandeered a section of the palace kitchens to pre-prepare the silver-neutralizing compound in quantities that the palace healers had not thought to produce, because the palace healers had not anticipated the volume of silver wounds that Dar
