The march of the Blackwood Pack was the march of a dying beast.
Under a grey, weeping sky that threatened to unleash a heavy spring blizzard, forty-odd warriors stumbled through the deep, half-frozen mud of the valley. They did not look like the proud defenders of the fertile southern lands. Their silver-and-green cloaks were sodden, torn, and splattered with mud. They walked in a sullen, terrified silence, their heads bowed against the biting wind.
Without an active, stable alpha aura to bind them, their wolves were starving. The pack bond was not just broken; it was rotting, dragging down their collective energy, leaving them physically weak and spiritually adrift.
At their head rode Caleb.
He did not look like an Alpha. He looked like a specter. He was tied to his saddle, his knees
