559 First Death

Melkree's dried mud-covered face scrunched up in an intense effort of concentration. Compared to the reaction Jake expected, she was neither intimidated nor angry. Her emotional state was as smooth and unruffled as the surface of a waveless sea.

Her yellow eyes turned glassy as she spaced out, repeating his last words over and over in her mind without realizing how strange her behavior was. Her subordinates must have been used to her eccentricities, because one of them, a huge Lycan coughed loudly near her ear to snap her out of it.

He looked a bit like his cousin Kevin in his Werebear appearance, but his morphology and thick brown fur were more like a Saint Bernard. The bulges and folds dangling around his lips and his panting tongue covered with lava gave him a funny look, but his attitude was one of extreme seriousness and concern.