Duncan made it another twenty meters before Hale decided that allowing him to continue pretending his ribs were a minor inconvenience was wasting time.
He caught Duncan beneath the uninjured arm and took some of his weight without asking, earning a brief look of irritation that Hale ignored. Nero remained on Duncan's other side, less because the dominant alpha needed two men to keep him upright than because Nero had accepted his loyalty less than five minutes ago and apparently saw no contradiction between trust and supervision.
The residence appeared gradually through the wet forest as they descended, grey stone emerging between pine trunks and winter brush. From this angle it looked even less like a prison than it had in surveillance photographs. Two stories followed the slope of the mountain, broad windows facing the valley, while the oldest portion of the structure disappeared partly into the rock behind the newer wings.
Arion's voice came through Hale's receiver.
