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Prologue: Bastien

The an to descend the tree, ht sky, where Victoria had disappeared It kept posing the saround, narrowly dodging falling branches and flah the rapidly descending s the foothills up ahead

Somebody must have sounded an alar out Everything was a blur of chaos as everyone raced for their lives from the mutants

"Bastien!" Brucella yelled to me "Stay with us!" She had reached her husband and was surrounded by a nuust Even if every single wolf here tonight was incinerated, I would hardly shed a tear None of them felt like family None of them felt like friends My primary concern would be the fate of my home country with so many of the most influential tribes wiped out

Brucella continued to bark for ainst my ears as I lurched toward a swathe of trees still untouched by fire As always, I felt as if I could notof the wolves hadin all directions, but I did not look back I continued surging forward, away from Brucella Away froirl… wherever she is now

I felt crippled Wounded Confused All I wanted was to get away Fro, familiar and unfamiliar I wanted the world around me to vanish

As I shot deeper into the woods, the darkness enshroudinginto the soil beneath me, I shut down my mind and focused on the only constants I had left in th My speed

Running as a lone wolf, Iabove s and their fearsome cries dissolved in the distance

I did not stop until I arrived at a beach A beach that was once an old port of the Woodlands, abandoned several decades ago in favor of a new one further south A nuether by rope I raced over to a s it fro the boat deeper with in its own course over the waves I leapt inside and stood on the old rickety deck, gazing back at the island An orange glow touched the sky in the distance, even as anguished howling pierced the night

As the waves carried me further and further away, I wondered whether this would be

Running and alone

Victoria

When er stifle my e the edges of the sink, I breathed heavily And then the tears fell--a drizzle at first, then a downpour I did not want my parents to see me I did not want them to ask me why I was so affected The pain was still so fresh I did not feel ready to talk about it

But I could not have expected my mother to stay out as I broke down

She knocked at the door before sliding it open and stepping inside "Oh, honey," she said, lowering and gatheringin that uised as protectors reigned supre doubted and blamed for those bastards’ atrocities And Bastien’s life What would becoht have already become of him?

My iving the about the expression in my mother’s violet-blue eyes made me melt Her deep concern Her love

Suddenly I realized I did not want to hold everything back I wanted to tell her the truth--partly in an attes, which were currently caught in a storan "He doubts me… He thinks what happened could be all ed to sink her claws into hiet tiet ti that he would remember that my parents had stopped by his cousin’s, and that he would suspect that Detrius was the culprit in all of this But I did not kno y He had been brought up in a world of swords, spears, bows and arrows Would the idea of a tracker even enter his mind? The Blackhalls’ lair still looked ns of the hunters’ influence there yet

My mother kissed the back of, I’m sure it’s him"

How could I explain toand powerful Brutally so But inside… he was soft He was in a vulnerable place in his life I had been a lifeline to hiht of hi that I could have betrayed him, played on his emotions at a time when he was h time around the Northstones to see that they were no fa he was even still alive Even if he had soed to flee from the hunters, ould become of his life? If he and the Northstones survived, would he eventually succumb to Brucella and htest? Would he just settle down into the path of least resistance? Would that spark, that fire I’d so admired in him, fizzle out?