Nathan’s POV

The days blurred together like a nightmare that refused to end. The smell of sickness clung to the air metallic, sour, heavy no matter how much the healers burned herbs or how many fires we kept lit through the night.

At first, it was one or two pack members falling ill. Then ten. Then entire families. By the end of the week, the healers’ huts overflowed, and the moans of the dying echoed through the forest. Wolves who had run alongside me in battle now lay weak and ...