Chapter 11: Lend, Not Claim

I took the stairs three at a time with Corwin right behind me.

The great doors stood open to the night.

Alaric lay on the front steps in the snow, on his back, with his arms thrown wide.

He was in half a shift.

His hands had thickened into claws and his spine bowed under his shirt, and his face kept sliding between a man's and a wolf's.

His eyes were rolled back, and a thin red foam bubbled at his mouth.

Beatrix knelt over him in her nightgown, pressing both palms to his chest.

"Come on," she was saying. "Come on, come on, come on."

Her bond mark glowed on her collarbone, a pale silver crescent.

It was flickering, and it wasn't doing anything.

The pack had come out behind us, and they stood in a wide silent ring in the snow.

Nobody moved to help.

"Somebody get the healer," I said.

"She's on the south road," a woman whispered. "She won't be back till dawn."

"Then do something!"

"There's nothing to do," Beatrix said. Her voice had cracked all the way open.

"I've tried. I try every night. It won't take me, it never took me."

She stopped.

She had said too much, and she knew it.

Alaric's chest shuddered up and down once, and then it stopped.

I dropped to my knees in the snow.

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