When they arrive at the dungeon, the air smellslike the end of the world.
Darien stands at the threshold of the cell, his lungs burning with the scent of incinerated bone reeking in the confined space. There is no body to bury. Tobias Bellamy—the man who has loomed over Darien's entire life like an immovable mountain—is reduced to a pile of scorched flesh and bone, leaving nothing but a jagged violet stain on the stone floor.
Beside him, Amias shakes with a bone-deep terror that completely replaces any grief. "He did it," Amias whispers, his voice cracking like dry glass. "He really did it."
Darien can't speak. His mind is a fractured mirror, reflecting images of the brother he thought he knew against the monster who left these scorch marks. He doesn't feel like an Alpha or a warrior; he feels like a child lost in a dark, suffocating forest.
Morgan... what have you become?
