Maria.
The suffocating heat inside the infirmary was making my skin crawl.
I was pacing a tight, frantic circle around the room, my bare feet gripping the cold floorboards. The distant, terrible sounds of clanking iron, shouting men, and the wet, brutal thud of weapons echoing from the hallway made my heart hammer against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I couldn't just sit here. I couldn't just lie on that cot wrapped in furs while Noah and Adrein bled for me outside that door.
Every single instinct in my body—every thread of my newly awakened wolf—was screaming at me to run out there. I was going to lose him. I felt it in my chest, a cold, sickening panic that tightened around my throat until I could barely draw breath. Noah was out there facing Vincent's men alone, exhausted, weakened by the very poison that had been flushed from my veins, and I was sitting in the dark doing nothing.
