ARIA POV
The first thing that frightened me was not the blood.
It was the way his eyes were trying too hard to stay focused on me, like he was manually holding them in place, like clarity had become something he had to wrestle back into his skull every time it slipped, and each time it slipped it went a little farther.
He was too warm under my hands.
Not the warmth of exertion, not the heat of adrenaline, but something feverish and wrong, something building under the skin while he stood there pretending he could still outrun the forest if he had to.
He was still thinking about the children.
I could see it in the way his gaze kept trying to shift past me toward the direction of the broken trail, toward the invisible line that separated here from Crescent Moon territory, as if sheer wi
