Chapter 21

• War changes people, it was a known verity. Regardless of descent, it was a constant ill which consumed the zeal of the mind and ability to hope. But if there was life, they say, then well... And there was definitely life, Everest observed the weak and broken that strolled into the hold. Each with a small heap of belonging clutch to their sides, they came in packs, some alone and injured. There kids who strolled in with no parents and parents who crawled in, grieving lost children. It was a rueful sight.
• Everest knew a few of the people that stalked in, or he had known them. From the balcony where he watched, they resembled shells of former selves. Living only because death hadn’t come for them. The survivors would have been a good thing for the fight but they knew nothing. None of them knew why they had survived an attack that left no survivors. They remembered no detail of the attacks, not of who was responsible or what was causing werewolves to die in the ugliest way.
• The hold was seemingly endless with towering trees that fenced buildings. It wasn’t always perceived as a hold until the war began three years ago. It had been a municipality which had its disagreement with other packs but it was more of required rivalries than an all out massacre. Everest had a problem calling what was happening to his kind war, they had no idea who the enemy was and it left them swinging in the dark with no win. They weren’t a race to be hunted, they did the hunting and it made his wolf want to rip whatever lured in the darkness into shred for making defeat a stench they had to carry around.