Arielle's POV
The bloodline power had a cost I had not accounted for.
I discovered it three months into my time at Nightshade, on a morning when I woke before dawn with my head pounding and the mark burning with an intensity that had not been there since the early days in the forest.
Not pain. Not quite. More like pressure. Like something that had been stored in a too-small space had expanded overnight.
I lay in the dark and breathed through it.
An hour later it had not eased. I got up, dressed, and went to find Dessa.
She was already in her workroom. This was not unusual. Dessa seemed to operate on a different time schedule than the rest of the pack, appearing wherever she was needed without apparent need for the ordinary rhythms of sleep.
She looked at me when I came in and said,
