The mist of blood lingered in the area like an exotic, entrancing perfume. I danced through it, drunk, but crystal clear, maiming, killing, carving the pliant flesh into hot, juicy morsels. They fell before me and I loved it. Rage sang through my veins, fuel to my internal inferno. Inside me a distant small voice squeaked a warning—I was using up the last of my fragile reserves—but it felt so good and I didn’t want to stop.

Another man stepped in front of me. I backhanded him out of the way. He flew and fell. Fun! I chased him and pinned him to the ground. My teeth snapped a hair from his throat. Hello, prey!

A familiar scent zinged through my nose. I knew this scent. I puzzled over it, holding the man down.

A name floated up to the surface of my memory: Roman.

Reality slammed into me, sudden and hard. I pulled myself back from the brink. My mind registered the strained expression on Roman’s face and my claws puncturing his shoulders.

Oh God.

I rocked back, releasing him, slipped on something slick, and slumped against a ruined building. The street was filled with bodies. Blood pooled in the recesses of the uneven pavement, its scent like the cut of a razor on my tongue. A thing that used to be a woman lay only a few feet away. Half of her stomach was missing and her skull was a mess of crushed bone. I had done that.

“You okay?” I asked softly. My voice was hoarse.

“Yeah.” Roman slowly rolled up. “What the fuck was that?”

“Bouda rage. It happens sometimes when we’re at our limit. We get a few minutes of berserker rage.” It was the last-ditch defensive mechanism of a body out of options. “I was bitten by a viper earlier. The Pack medmage pumped me full of antivenom. It made me weak, so when I turned, my body reacted. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Roman brushed his robe and got up. “No worries. Black doesn’t show blood at all.”

“I’m sorry.” He had no idea how close I had come to killing him.

“No worries. Look.” He raised his arms, indicating the scene with the dismembered bodies, blood, and his black horse at the beginning of the bridge. “All our enemies are dead, we survived, the horse survived, the staff survived. I even get to say the best line from my favorite book. All is well.”

I pushed away from the building. Roman opened his mouth to say something and didn’t close it.

“What is it?”

“Breasts.”

“Oh for the love of God!”

Roman squeezed his eyes shut and turned away from me. “I have a cloak in my bag.”

“I’m comfortable with my body the way it is,” I growled.

He turned toward me a little and opened one eye, then turned and looked at me. Or rather at my chest.