“Nothing,” I interrupt as I try to work out why the hell I just snarled.
Before I can shout a warning, Keane springs at her. Her hand flashes out and I lunge forward, shoving Keane out of the way. Hard. Heat simmers over my skin, dancing over me like a warm spring day.
Then suddenly, somehow I’m across the clearing, standing on something lumpy that doesn’t feel like the ground, and there’s an unfamiliar taste in my mouth that I can’t quite place.
“Briar.” The strange note in Keane’s voice breaks whatever weirdness holds me immobile.
I blink, and the world makes sense again. Only then it doesn’t, because Diana Calla’s vacant blue eyes stare up at me, her face bone-white and her mouth gaping open. Blood covers her neck and soaks the ground beneath her head. Dead. She’s dead. I take a step back, and my front paw lands in something wet.
I freeze.
My frontwhat?
I glance down.
Okay, that’s… not right.
I blink twice, just in case I have something in my eyes messing with my vision, but that doesn’t change what I’m seeing.
Maybe I’m imagining things.
Keane can tell me what the hell is going on. So I turn around to find that Keane has shifted to human, and he’s staring at me with eyes so wide with shock it should be funny. And he’s not the only one doing it. The two wolves he was squaring off against earlier gape at me, too.
“You’re a wolf,” Keane says.
“Of course I’m not a wolf,” I tell him. But no human words emerge—just the growls of a wolf.
