Guilermo had never truly understood the concept of helplessness.
He knew pain; he had taken a serrated knife to the shoulder during the border wars. He knew fear; he had stared down a rogue pack when he was just a pup with teeth too big for his jaw. He knew exhaustion; the Council had tried to bury him under mountains of treaty paperwork and red tape for years.
Now, lying face down in the snow, he finally learned the vocabulary of surrender.
The cold wasn't just on his skin. It was inside him. The Grey Lands were infamous for their chill. A damp, unnatural temperature that didn't just freeze water, but seemed to slow down time itself. But the cold in Guilermo’s chest was worse. It was the absolute zero of a soul that had been hollowed out.
He couldn't feel his toes. He couldn't feel th
