Chapter 32

• I kept quiet all the way back to the inn, haunted by the echoes of the night-the piercing screams, the sickening crunch of bones, the tearing of flesh. The metallic scent of blood mixed with mud clung to my memory. I had witnessed death countless times on battlefields, but never like this-never this vicious, this utterly senseless. Alpha Stefano hadn't been a part of the massacre himself; he'd done something far worse. He had watched it all, guiding the slaughter from the shadows.
• "The emissaries were impressed," Davide commented dryly as we neared the inn. "They'll return to Alpha Matteo with news that Stefano has become exactly what he wanted-an executioner with no remorse."
• A surge of nausea hit me. Stefano's brutality, his lack of mercy, wasn't what unsettled me most. It was the enjoyment he seemed to take in every scream, every labored breath, as if savoring the torment. Out on that field, Stefano had been the monster everyone feared.