I curled into the corner. The feeling below my waist began to fade, replaced by a pain so sharp I could barely breathe. The Hollowbane was working its way through my blood, burning from the inside. I could feel it reaching for something deeper than organs, deeper than bone. It was reaching for my bloodline itself, the thread that connected me to every Ashvale who had ever lived, and it was cauterizing the end.
I would probably never sire pups again. And the one pup I had prayed for day and night turned out to belong to someone else.
I drifted in and out of consciousness through the night. Below my waist, everything had gone numb long ago. My wolf had gone quiet. Not sleeping. Not resting. Just quiet, in the way a wounded animal goes quiet when it stops believing help is coming.
The door burst open with a single kick. Caspian Stormfang strode in with a handful of guards behind him. The smell hit me before I could focus my eyes: polished steel and northern pine and the sharp musk of territorial marking, aggressive and deliberate, filling the small room like a claim.