Chapter 502

The stone was silent. The silence was absolute. The absolute was producing a panic in Dexmon’s chest that he was converting into action because action was the only alternative to screaming and screaming would help no one.

Dex: Gavriel, status. NOW.

Meanwhile, the tunnel around Gavriel warbled. Shifted. The walls breathed. The ceiling contracted. The geometry of the space was changing around him like the throat of something alive, and the alive was swallowing, and the swallowing was producing a claustrophobia that he was stamping down with both boots because claustrophobia was a luxury he could afford exactly never.

“Serena?” he called, voice sharp, echoing into the dark. “Serena, where are you?”

His eyes strained as they adjusted, hands sweeping over cold stone. Empty. She wasn’t there.

No answer. Then he heard her. Soft. Fractured. Terrified.

“Gav…” Her voice trembled. “Gav, please…”

He froze. It was her voice. Perfect. Every inflection was right. But it came from the walls. All around him.

“Please… please…” the voices whispered, overlapping, breaking apart and reforming.

“I’m lost…”

He felt her fear spike through the matebond, sharp enough to make his chest ache. He could smell her. Close. Too close to be unseen.

His hands curled into fists. His brain was screaming run toward her and his training was screaming hold position and the screaming was producing a split down the center of his decision-making that was physically painful.

Gavriel spoke into their mindlink, forcing his voice steady.

Gavriel: Serena, where are you?

Her answer came ragged, fraying at the edges.

Serena: Gav… I keep hearing your voice.

Cold dread slid down his spine.

Before he could respond, Dexmon cut in, fast and firm.

Dexmon: It’s not real, Serena. None of it is. We’re hearing it too.

The mindlink was working. The cuffs were working. That was the only piece of good news in a situation that was otherwise constructed entirely of bad news stacked on top of worse news wearing a hat made of catastrophic news.

Gavriel froze as panic spiked again through his chest, sudden and vicious. Rook was howling in his mind.

The panic was wrong. It was his, but it wasn’t. The frequency was off. The texture was off. The panic tasted like someone else’s fear wearing his nervous system like a borrowed jacket.

Gavriel: That isn’t our panic.

Rook: No. MATE.

Gavriel: We are feeling her panic.

Rook: YES, you dumb-dumb. I have been SAYING this. You are FEELING her FEAR in your CHEST like it is YOUR fear. What else do you need? A letter? A certificate? A rune carved into your forehead that says MATE?

Gav sniffed the air and found her scent. He followed it, running at full-speed. Not noticing that his full-speed was much faster than his full-speed had been before.

Gavriel: How do I feel her emotions this clearly, Rook?

Rook: Second chance mate.

Gavriel: She’s not our second chance mate. Fin is her second chance mate, Rook.

Rook: Fated to us too.

Gavriel: Since when?

Rook: Since we broke it with the crazy woman who was never our mate.

Gavriel: I was sitting in a courtroom with her after and didn’t feel it like this. What am I missing?

Rook: I told you she was mate in the courtroom. You were feeling her then too. Not to this degree but you were.

The panic in his chest was hers. Clear as his own heartbeat. Louder, maybe. The sensation was hers and undeniable. A door he had been leaning against with his entire body weight and the door had just blown off its hinges and taken him with it while his wolf watched, irritated it had taken this long.

Before he could ask Rook anything else, Fin’s voice came through the mindlink. It sounded like static. Gavriel could barely hear it.

Fin: Serena, breathe. I feel you, baby. Take a breath. None of this is real.

The signal was fractured. Thousands of miles of distance and whatever dark magic was embedded in these walls were chewing through the cuff’s connection, the words arriving in pieces, broken, held together by sheer Alpha willpower and the specific stubbornness of a man whose mate was terrified and whose terrified was a frequency Finnick Shadowclaw could hear through a hurricane.

Gavriel felt her trying to steady herself. The panic in his chest downshifted from screaming to shaking, the matebond carrying her effort like a pulse, and the pulse was her breathing and the breathing was working and the working was Fin’s voice cutting through the dark like a scalpel through noise.

Gavriel: Serena, I fell down right behind you. Where did you go?

Fin: Look around, Serena. Is there anything near you that Gavriel can use to find you?

The question was calm. Practical. Perfectly timed. Fin wasn’t there. He was thousands of miles away, standing in a library he had probably destroyed by now, wearing a cuff that was barely transmitting, and somehow he was the most useful person in this entire goddamn tunnel. He understood exactly what was happening.

And Serena heard him.

Serena: They keep pulling me into por—

Her voice cut off before she could finish her sentence.

The mindlink went dead. The dead was total. One second her voice was there, fraying, breaking, alive, and the next second the channel was empty and the empty was the worst sound Gavriel had ever heard because silence from Serena was never, ever good.

“Serena!” Gavriel was already moving, sprinting blind through the dark, following her scent. The scent was everywhere and nowhere, bouncing off walls that were designed to confuse tracking, the stone saturated with traces of her that led in every direction and whose every direction was the same as no direction.

Click.

He skidded to a halt. The sound echoed behind him. Sharp. Deliberate. The kind of sound that ancient architecture made when it was waking up and the waking was aimed at whoever had just triggered it and the whoever was him and the him was alone.

Gavriel turned slowly.