The hall didn't know what to do with itself.
Five hundred wolves who had come tonight in silk and jewels and the comfortable assumption that the worst thing that could happen at a royal gala was bad wine now stood against the walls of a room that smelled of blood and looked like the aftermath of something that didn't have a clean name yet. Overturned tables. Shattered crystal. Four deep claw marks in the stone floor that nobody was standing near.
Denton had not moved.
He stood in the center of the hall with his right arm hanging wrong and his flanks bleeding and the particular stillness of a man who was refusing to let his body's condition become visible information. His doctors had moved toward him twice and he had stopped them both times with a look. He would not be treated in this hall. Not in front of these people. Not tonight.
Jason had shifted back.
