When Demion moved, the world moved with him.
He lifted Ariana with the careful brutality of a man who had carried armies and heartbreak. Her limbs hung like wet linen; her breaths were shallow, quick pinpricks in the hollow of her chest. Each step he took felt sacrilegious among the monuments of the fallena parade of ruined bodies, half-buried banners, and twisted metal that caught the dull light like broken teeth.
Tyler met him at the lip of the clearing, eyes wide and hands trembling. Behind him, a handful of medics clustered, uncertain; the council's orders had made them wary. Demion did not spare them a look. He set Ariana down on a canvas stretcher with the same gentleness he would use to lay a sleeping child in a cradle, then turned toward Tyler.
"Now," he said. The word was not a request.
Tyler snapped to motion as if the Alpha's voice were a whip. "On it," he answered, sprinting toward the pack's makeshift infirmary.
