I kept quiet all the way back to the inn, haunted by the echoes of the night-the piercing screams, the sickening crunch of bones, the tearing of flesh. The metallic scent of blood mixed with mud clung to my memory. I had witnessed death countless times on battlefields, but never like this-never this vicious, this utterly senseless. Alpha Stefano hadn't been a part of the massacre himself; he'd done something far worse. He had watched it all, guiding the slaughter from the shadows.

"The ...