102 | HOUNDS OF LOVE

The sun climbed steadily overhead as we sprinted through the woods. Determination, driven by terror over Ares’s condition, led the way. Birdsong and the chirping of crickets swirled through the air like dust motes, undaunted and uninhibited by our presence in their woodland home. They sounded too sweet, too jolly, for the sour mood that clung to us as we ran. A perpetual cloud hovered over me, casting the pale winter sunlight in shades of grey.

I had to keep blinking to make sure my vision wasn’t truly returning to the grey scale I had once known. Between the shadows and my sadness, it was hard to tell.

The claw marks on my arm, sliced there by Mum by accident, had already healed, but they still hurt somewhere deeper, somewhere darker, within my soul. If I’d been in my human body, I would’ve rubbed at the healed wound, irritated by the force of my emotions.

I had bigger things to worry about, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. The way my mum had looked when she’d seen what she’d d