The circle was smaller than she remembered it being.
Packs of wolves crowded around it, shoulder to shoulder, close enough to touch. Their hides glistened with heat, sweat, and musk; the air was thick with it. Fires crackled and spit, tongues licking up eyes that glowed in gold and red, stung by bloodlust. Every breath she took was a rasp down her throat, raw and burning with smoke and sweat and adrenaline. The very air was alive, so dense with heat and noise that it thrummed, throbbed with each heartbeat, and Vera had to brace herself so that her knees didn’t buckle.
Marcus’s poison lingered in the air, winding around them like smoke that wouldn’t go out. He waited at the edge of the ring, unruffled as a priest at the altar, his wolves spread out behind him in a careful, calculated form
