The pristine white of the sacrificial burial shroud was already turning a sickening, splattered gray from the flying mud and freezing sleet of the courtyard. Inside that heavy silk fabric, Baron wasn't the proud, brooding future prince boy who had once challenged the hierarchy of the pack. He was shaking violently, his broad shoulders collapsing inward as silent, heavy tears streamed down his pale, translucent face.
He looked like a terrified, helpless little lamb led directly to an ancient, blood-stained altar, his bronze, freckled nose twitching with a broken, breathless wheeze. The cold gold of his eyes was entirely shattered, filled with the sheer horror of a boy who had been robbed of his humanity, his wolf, and his mortality all in a single night.
But it was Violet who truly shattered the heavy, suffocating silence of the Alberta dawn.
