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He hiain He couldn't do it hard enough If there was a cliff nearby, he would have flung himself from it

Rand, don't SshhEasy

The voice helped, but he couldn't identify it There was a sense of soh he told himself that was an illusion

He dropped to the ground, panting, his body quitting on him, overcome by too many different types of pain Too much

Make it stop

They set the house on fire Grey and hisa challenge There was a ritual Grey had challenged Sylvan and fought wolf to wolf Not this time

Grey's wolves had coht to shoot Sheba as she was co out of the front door That here Rand had found her She'd been distracted, Rand guessed His four offspring, now shifting randomly between hu Sheba and Sylvan's children, the three now in high school, but Sheba was most involved in their care

Dylef apparently burst frounfire They shot hi there as he fell to his knees, his eyes confused, hazy Then vacant Gone in a blink, no ti he'd said to Rand had been so ridiculously innocuous like, "I'll be out to help you after I put a coat of finish on the table" The scent of the finish had also masked the approach of Grey and his pack

Rand was out in the back field, working on the tractor they used, because they sold crops on the side to supple, so he didn't hear the gunfire, but an uneasy feeling had hi off the tractor to listen, scent the wind That hen he smelled smoke

Running; he was running, hearing ot there Two of Grey's betas came out of the kitchen door They carried bats Bloodstained bats, the baseball bats he'd bought for Sylvan's boys, ere on the teah school They practiced in the backyard with Dylef and Rand sohts while Sheba made dinner and watched with a smile out the spacious kitchen

"Not worth wasting a bullet Easy as taking out water balloons," one of the betas had laughed

Rand hadn't realized the soul could be destroyed by laughter Soth to comprehend--or survive--the cruelty of the soulless

His children Maple, Teague, Cira Shy His little girl, frailer than the rest, but gaining strength every day She should have grown up to be teased by her brothers and sisters about being the runt of the litter

But realizing they were gone, putting together those bloodstained bats with the unthinkable, had come later At that second, Silas and Slate, Sylvan's boys, exploded out of the attic ith a shower of glass In wolf form, they ran across the roof line and launched themselves onto the shoulders of the two males

The attic was their hangout, where they listened to music and did their hoave them a couple uninterrupted hours to do that before she had the, while she and Mischa prepared dinner

They'd probably had the music up so loud, and hadn't realized the intruders were in the house until it was too late The young le- to launch theuns

Rand redoubled his efforts to get to theh Still, Sylvan would have been so proud of his children Slate and Silas killed thosebastards before Grey's other followers shot them, cowards that they were

Later, Rand would learn they'd already killed Mischa, on the basketball court they'd poured for the kids behind the barn She was trying out for the school team

All the teens had been so athletic So strong and beautiful, every one of them When he shifted, Slate's wolf form looked sothreads of brown that gave his coat the salt and pepper look