Harlen didn't leave quietly.
The moment the elder lieutenant turned his back on Silas, the fragile dam holding back the pack's panic completely burst. The retreat wasn't an orderly file; it was a chaotic, violent stampede.
"Traitor!" a woman shrieked at Silas, spitting into the crimson snow as she dragged her crying pups toward the tree line.
"You've doomed us all for a witch!" a warrior roared, throwing his pack insignia into the mud at Silas's feet before shifting into a massive gray wolf and bolting into the blizzard.
The noise was deafening—a symphony of furious snarls, breaking wood as departing wolves trashed their own shelters, and the heavy, panicked breathing of hundreds of people fleeing for their lives.
A group of about twenty loyalists, led by a blood-splattered Kael, refu
