Chapter 59

Adrian's POV

I find Pippa in our tent after the memorial service. She’s sitting on the deflating air mattress, staring out into nothingness. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“No,” I echo her. “Neither am I.”

Death doesn't usually bother me. I've sat next to many people, offering guidance and support as they watched loved ones depart from this world. I've conducted as many, if not more, funeral services, but today I could feel the wolves' grief as accutely as if it were my own, and I nearly fell to pieces. We've seen too much death too fast.

I fall on the mattress next to Pippa, hitting the ground under us with a jarring thump. “Mattress is deflating,” she says. Her voice is monotone, almost dead. “What happened?”

“These things deflate. I’ll ask Monty to-”

“No,” she interrupts me. “To my life. How the hell did I end up here? In this place? Surrounded by death and blood and chaos.”

Watching the cremations were the hardest on her. I felt her shock and pain when the wolves lit the funeral pyres. We