126 | THE SIEGE OF WINTERPAW

With a groan, the last door was bolted shut.

“Well,” said Cendres, wiping his hands on his trouser legs, “that was anticlimactic.”

And then there was a thump.

And a thud.

And another.

And more – tens more, hundreds more. Claws scrabbled at the wood, at the rock, at the stone, and menacing howls filled the air. They seeped through the cracks in the mountain: a song of death and the promise of bloodshed.

“You spoke too soon, Cen,” I called down to him as I sprinted up the stairs, hunting for a window to look out from. Any low down enough to be broken through had been hastily boarded up, but some on the higher levels of the Pack House had been left open as vantage points.

Ares was hot on my heels, though I could hear the laboured pants interspersing his breaths and I could feel the flare of residual pain from his wounds.

A shout bellowed up from below. “Give me my daughter, Ares!” cried Scillian. “She would never side with you. Never. Especially not when death would be her only reward!”