KAEL
We left a few hours later, just after the light shifted and the air began to cool.
Paisley had stayed in his wolf form all night. We’d hoped that forcing the change would burn the serum out of him faster, the way exhaustion sometimes burned out poison.
It didn’t work. Whatever had been put into his body didn’t stop at the skin. It reached his wolf too, sank into it, clung there. That bothered me more than I liked.
For a moment, doubt crept in. Maybe I’d misread him. Maybe his wolf wasn’t as strong as I’d thought when I first sensed it. Maybe I’d built him up in my head because I wanted there to be something worth saving.
The thought came too late to matter.
Thane had been clear. We’d cornered him, stripped him of options, and he didn’t forgive that. He wanted us gone, and he w
