Dragoncrest Cliffs "With it or on it."

If asked, Mallaidh would say she hadn’t meant to kill. Eurycrates was crossing the distance, was aiming for Ephraim’s throat, and the boy would be dead. Perhaps she thought she could subdue or deter or shove away. She thinks of the wolf that pinned her down as a child, of Artaax and the black wolf.

If asked, she’d say she isn’t a killer.

But when teeth connect to flesh, julgar serrated by her teeth and the among of warm blood coating her throat, she knows there’s no help for him. If he’d kept focus on her, he might still be standing, but the switch had been flipped the moment he aimed for someone of hers.

He drops to the ground when she lets go, wet and red, eyes ablaze. All she hears is her heart pounding in her chest, harder and harder, thump thump thump thump

thump thump...

Seconds later she’s jostled by the commotion, by the child flinging herself into Blixen. There’s not a single thought left in her mind. She lunges through the other wolves with bloodied jaws, aiming to control the flailing child by the slim of her waist.