Chapter 37 · Shifting Foundations

The steel hit the slate floor with a crack like rifle fire, and nobody breathed.

Torin stayed on his knees in the center of the hall, his head bowed, blood dripping off his torn shoulder in heavy, dark splatters. His dual blades lay dead in front of him. He didn’t make a move to reach for them.

An Alpha kneeling before two hundred wolves who had been bred to die standing.

"Get up," I rasped, my spine pressed flat against the stone pillar. My palm hovered over my belly, shielding the child this room was not supposed to name. "Torin. Get up."

He didn't. He raised his head, blood cutting through his left brow, his gray eyes locking onto mine with an agony that made my chest cave.

"I broke faith with her," he said, loud enough to echo off the vaulted timber. "Three years I kept her at arm's length like an unpaid debt. She cut the bond because I left her starving. That blood is on my hands. Not hers."

A collective intake of air hissed across the benches.

"Touching," Kaelen said, his boots clicking on the flagstones as he prowled a slow circle around Torin.