The heavy iron gates of the Blackfang Stronghold groaned as they were thrown open against the midnight gale, the metal screaming like a banshee in the dark. The return of the Silver-Kin was not marked by the rhythmic, prideful gallop of a triumphant pack, but by the frantic, uneven stumbling of broken men.
The snow beneath their boots was stained not by the enemy's blood, but by their own. At the center of the ragged formation, four warriors carried a makeshift litter, their faces masks of pure, unadulterated terror. On it lay Kaelen, the Alpha of the West—a man who usually moved with the ethereal grace of moonlight on water—now reduced to a shivering, dying heap of silver and shadow.
