Chapter 94. A Golden Shield

Gavriel moved through the town like a shadow, every step deliberate. The closer he drew to the square, the louder the panic grew—shouts, crying, the metallic ring of shutters being slammed shut.

People ran past him, faces pale, eyes wild. Mothers clutched children to their chests; shopkeepers shoved crates and barrels into doorways and bolted them. Horses reared as riders forced them onward; a dog yelped and fled into an alley.

The sight that met them at the market was worse than the reports had suggested. A cart lay overturned, its fruit scattered as if a storm had passed through it.

Two men hunched near a well, their hands stained dark. One of them reached for a passerby, and the crowd recoiled as his fingers scraped across skin—where he touched, the flesh puckered and blackened as though a disease had touched it and taken hold. People screamed and scattered.

“Alpha!” a guard shouted, breathless, stumbling to his knees before Gavriel. “It started at the inf