Blackfeather Woods I just needed a little off the top.

The snarl penetrated the darkness around him. He felt it more than he heard it, and before Titmouse could react the boy was throwing himself forwards. His snapping teeth came so close to his exposed throat—and then he felt the pinch. That sickeningly familiar sensation, as teeth sank in to flesh. He thought of Towhee's face so close to his carotid; the flurry of red wings, the salt in his blood mixing with the sea. The sting of it in his wound, like fire.

Fire—Titmouse's gaze flashed suddenly at the thought of the Redhawk girl running for her life. Of Maegi, and the way the shadows sank away from them both, letting them loose. The swarming darkness of the wily crows and their larger cousins, the—Raven.

A roar bellowed around him almost as soon as he felt the constriction of those teeth at his throat; he reared up and pushed forwards off the mound of twisting roots and muddy hillside, plunging the two of them back in to the darkness which seemed to swarm like thousands of black wings. He wouldn't let this happen. He wouldn't go down without a fight—that just wasn't the way Titmouse worked.