Dealing with the bodies was a grim, physically taxing ordeal. Even with Seraphina directing him, her movements hampered by her injured shoulder and the lingering effects of the transformation and silver poisoning, moving four dead werewolves – even partially shifted ones – into the deeper, consuming fissures of the cave system pushed Elias to his absolute physical limit. He discovered muscles he didn't know he had, strained in ways that left him aching and trembling with exhaustion by the time they were finished. Seraphina, despite her own weakened state, possessed a strength that was still far beyond human norms, doing the bulk of the heavy lifting with a grim determination that ignored her obvious pain. Throughout the gruesome task, a strange, unspoken understanding existed between them

