Chapter 33. What I Won't Command

Ronan's POV

Ewan had a scent. That was the only thing that made it possible.

Corvin didn't. Corvin was a ghost. But Ewan was a Thornfall wolf, raised on our mountain, and his trail lay across the Reach like a lit fuse. Grief and fury and wet fur.

I followed it on four legs with Thane running hot and silent under the bare stars, and Garrick behind me, and June's last look in my head. Bring him back. She hadn't said it. She hadn't needed to.

The trail went north. Toward the quarry road.

We found them at the split oak.

The same oak. The same hollow. Where June had knelt in the leaves with her hands on Tobin's wound two weeks ago.

Ewan had Corvin on the ground.

He was in wolf form, a big gray shape pinning a thin naked man into the leaves, his jaws closed around Corvin's throat. Not biting. Not yet. Just holding. I could hear him growling, a sound so low and continuous it seemed to come out