It didn’t take a mage scholar to see exactly which wolf the vampires wanted.

Rook lunged first, a green blur of muscle and fury, ripping a feral vampire clean in half. The two pieces hit the ground twitching in opposite directions, still trying to crawl toward Aurelia with the determination of something too stupid to understand it was dead.

Aegon barreled into another at full speed, jaws locking around its torso, momentum carrying both of them sideways. He tossed it off the cliff with a flick of his neck that had zero hesitation and maximum disrespect.

Aurelia darted under Xeon immediately, tucking herself beneath his massive frame like a very expensive, very glowing liability, letting those two put themselves between her and everything with fangs.

Xeon growled, low and vibrating, the kind of sound that rearranged the internal organs of anything dumb enough to be standing nearby. One vampire tried to dart under him toward her. He ripped it apart before its claws touched the ground, spitting the pieces sideways without breaking his guard.

They covered ground faster in wolf form, paws gripping stone that boots had stumbled over, four wolves eating distance that had taken hours on two legs.

But Aurelia seemed to be attracting more of them. Every dead vampire was replaced by three live ones, all of them laser-focused on the white wolf like she was a goddamn beacon broadcasting an all-you-can-eat signal.

Dexmon: I genuinely cannot decide what is worse. Serena attracting every psychopath with a pulse, or her wolf attracting every psychopath without one.

Fin: I was thinking the exact same thing.

Gavriel: Her wolf keeps dodging instead of biting. I think she doesn’t want to get any of it in her mouth.

Fin: Can you blame her?

Gavriel: Absolutely I cannot. That black drool would make ME gag and I once ate a raw fish on a dare.

Dexmon: We get her to shift back the second the coast is clear. She rides on my wolf. Aurelia is a damn magnet and we need her off the ground.

Fin: Agreed.

Gavriel: So our extraction plan is “kill everything, then taxi service.” Bold strategy.

Dexmon: You have a better one?

Gavriel: I do. Kill everything FASTER, then taxi service.

Dexmon: Incredible contribution, Gav.

Gavriel: I’m a ideas man. You two are the muscle. Division of labor.

Dexmon: You literally just ripped a vampire’s spine out and used it as a weapon.

Gavriel: Multitasking.

They came in droves, wave after wave, an inexhaustible pipeline of fangs and fury that the mountain kept producing like it had a factory underneath.

Four wolves continued up the volcanic slope, killing and climbing, climbing and killing, a rhythm that was becoming less strategy and more survival instinct set to a metronome of violence.

Every ten feet earned, every ledge cleared, every switchback survived.

Then the mountain ripped them apart.

One moment the wolves fought shoulder to shoulder, tearing through the swarm that refused to stop coming. The next, the path cracked down the middle, a seismic CRACK splitting the stone beneath their paws like a god had taken an axe to the ridge.

Aegon leapt back, hind legs scrambling for purchase on crumbling rock.

Rook and Xeon skidded sideways, claws gouging trenches in the stone as momentum carried them toward the wrong edge.

Aurelia’s footing shattered.

The ledge beneath her disintegrated into a cascade of broken stone and jagged obsidian, and gravity did what gravity does best.

She tumbled down the slope, white fur scraping black volcanic glass, landing hard on a lower ledge with a yelp that echoed off the cliff walls and made three wolves lose their goddamn minds simultaneously.

Before she could rise, three vampires were already on her.

Claws sliced. Teeth snapped. They drove her backward, snarling, crowding her toward the edge where loose gravel shifted under her paws like a trapdoor waiting to open.

Aurelia swiped at the first one.

It was, by every possible metric, a cat swipe.

Paw extended, claws out, a dainty little smack that connected with the vampire’s face and accomplished exactly as much as expected.

The vampire blinked at her. She blinked back. The vampire lunged again.

She tried a different approach with the second one. Lowered her head, pressed her nose against its chest, and shoved.

It went off the cliff.

Aurelia stared at the edge where it had been standing, visibly surprised that had worked.

The third vampire was less cooperative. More came. Two others pinned her from either side, their combined weight driving her legs apart, claws hooked into her fur like anchors.

Her white coat soaked with blood, breath ragged, legs trembling beneath the crushing pressure of bodies that smelled like rot and tasted like the end of something.

Four more climbed over them, hissing, piling on, drowning her in a tangle of clawed limbs and gnashing teeth until she disappeared beneath the heap entirely.

Aurelia whimpered.

The sound was small. Barely a breath. It carried up the mountain like a bullet.

Then a roar.

Aegon made it down first, launching himself off the upper ledge with the trajectory of a black comet that had taken the situation personally. He slammed into the pile at full alpha speed, scattering vampires like bowling pins made of bone and bad decisions, black fur bristling, his massive jaws clamping onto the first one and hurling it off the ledge. He barreled forward, ripping the others away from her, each one torn free and discarded with the efficiency of a wolf who was going to have a very loud internal conversation with his human later. He planted himself squarely between Aurelia and the swarm, head low, teeth bared, his body shielding hers like a wall of black fur and unbridled fury.

Aurelia didn’t waste the opening.

She bolted, scrambling beneath his body, her white fur brushing against his chest as she shot through the gap between his legs, forcing the vampires to choose: attack her, and face him.

They hesitated.

Only for a heartbeat, but a heartbeat was enough.

Xeon and Rook arrived in a storm of cold wind, fur bristling, eyes burning with the particular kind of murderous focus that comes from watching your packmate get buried alive.

Xeon slammed one vampire into the cliff wall so hard the stone cracked, fissures spiderwebbing outward from the impact crater, then ripped another off Rook’s hind leg with a snarl that vibrated through the rock itself.

Dexmon: More of them incoming. No shifting for her until the sun comes out.

Fin: Copy. Formation.

The three wolves fell into formation around Aurelia.

Aegon took point. The three male wolves were all roughly the same size, but to Aegon, he was the biggest, the fastest, the one who had already demonstrated that anything touching the white wolf was going to have a very short evening.

Xeon flanked left, covering the cliff side, using his bulk to block the narrow approaches where the ferals tried to squeeze through. Rook held the rear, methodical, relentless, dispatching anything that got past the other two with a cold wolf-eyed focus that left no survivors and no margin for error.

They moved as one organism. Four wolves, three killers, one glowing liability they would burn the whole mountain down to protect.

Aurelia stayed low and moved fast between them, learning the rhythm of their rotation, darting through gaps they created without being told.

She maybe didn’t have all the wolf instincts yet, but she learned quickly.

She adjusted. She adapted. She stayed alive.

And when a straggler slipped through Rook’s guard and lunged for her flank, she lowered her head and nose-shoved it off the cliff too.

Two for two. The technique was holding up. Rook and Xeon both blinked.