Chapter 554 Row, Row, Row Your OH SHIT

SNNRRGHH.

The sound ripped through the stillness like a knife through silk. Wet, violent, the guttural sucking noise of something inhaling through a nose designed for blood and darkness, a sound that belonged to no wolf and no shark and no creature that had any business existing above water.

Then came the wails.

A chorus of them were layered on top of each other, the sound burrowing past eardrums and settling directly into the part of the brain that handled fear and did a shit job of managing it.

Tiberon’s grip tightened on his sword. His knuckles went white. The King of Drakenfell, who had heard screams on a hundred battlefields and slept soundly after every single one, adjusted his stance toward the sound with the grim recalibration of a man who recognized a threat that belonged in a different category than anything he’d faced before.

Fin’s heartbeat lurched. He could feel it hammer against the inside of his ribs, a staccato that matched the rhythm of the wails, and his wolf surged to the surface so hard his eyes flashed gold before he shoved it back down. He couldn’t shift. He had Serena.

Gavriel’s green magic flared bright, re-snapping around all of them in that moment.

The wails grew louder.

The source materialized a second later.

Miles across the flat basin on the other side, the crater wall moved.

At first it looked like shadow, like the rock itself was shifting because they were so far away. But then the shadows separated into shapes like ants and the group collectively understood that the vampires were running down the inside of the basin the way water runs down a drain.

Mountain feeders. Jungle variants. Different breeds, different habitats, united by the universal decision to ruin everyone’s afternoon.

Every single one of them was absolutely fucking disgusting.

Fin didn’t wait.

He scooped Serena off the stone in one motion, one arm under her legs, the other bracing her shoulders, lifting her as though she weighed nothing because adrenaline and terror had a way of making physics negotiable.

Serena’s eyes cracked open. Her hand lifted, trembling so badly the fingers couldn’t stay steady.

Gold magic erupted from her shaking palm.

Behind her, Gavriel glowed gold in answer.

The color change registered in both Alphas simultaneously. Green to gold. It was less of a surprise for Fin, who had already seen Gavriel’s wolf turn gold.

But for Tiberon, it was a surprise. Neither Alpha acknowledged it. Neither Alpha missed it.

For Gavriel, the moment hit different.

It hit like a key sliding into a lock. She was channeling from him. He could feel her pulling from him and knew the sensation at this point. But it finally clicked that the default for her was gold, which confirmed what he already suspected, that everything green was all him. She hadn’t been fabricating or controlling it.

He was still processing that revelation when the boat appeared.

A gold, transparent vessel erupted directly on the frozen shoreline of the lake, conjured from Serena’s borrowed magic.

Its sides were smooth and curved, its shape aerodynamic, designed for speed by instinct rather than engineering. As Serena pushed more magic into the construct, a dome-like bubble shimmered over the top, sealing itself with a faint harmonic hum that vibrated through the stone beneath their boots.

No tentacle could pierce it.

Fin stepped inside without hesitation, Serena pulled tight against his chest, his boots hitting the gold floor with a sound like stepping onto hardened light. Tiberon and Gavriel vaulted in behind him, the King’s sword still drawn, Gavriel’s chest still leaking red through wraps that had given up pretending they were functional.

“I need to stand for a moment,” Serena whispered.

The whisper was so quiet it barely qualified as sound. Fin’s jaw tightened, every instinct screaming to keep her down, keep her still, keep her horizontal and healing and away from anything that required her to use a single calorie she didn’t have.

He steadied her anyway. His hands found her waist and held her upright until her legs remembered what vertical meant, his grip doing ninety percent of the work her muscles refused to.

She drew an arrow from her quiver. Soaking wet. The feathers were plastered flat, the shaft dripping dark water onto the gold floor.

A green bow fabricated in Gavriel’s hand. He decided to act like he’d meant to do that, and handed it to her like it was nothing.

Serena’s lips twitched.

Tiberon looked at the bow. Looked at Gavriel. Filed it.

“We’re discussing this later.”

“Looking forward to it, Alpha.”

“No you’re not.”

“No I’m not.”

Serena’s hands shook badly enough that nocking it took two attempts, her fingers slipping on the wet string before finding purchase on the second try.

Serena Frostborne did not pray for accuracy. She was the best archer in Drakenfell, and prayer implied uncertainty, and uncertainty implied a margin of error she had never once operated within.

She prayed now.

She prayed because her vision was tilting, because the bow felt heavier than it had ever felt, the tank was empty, and the target was really fucking far away.

She released.

A gold arrow streaked through the gold dome like it was liquid, without altering the structure.

It arced across the crater in a streak of gold light so brilliant it carved a second sun across the dark water below, climbing and climbing and climbing until it reached the zenith of its flight, hitting the wall of the crater.

Something had answered the prayer.

A rope of molten gold burst from the arrow’s base, screaming toward them across the distance, trailing light and heat and the particular velocity of magic that had somewhere to be and zero patience for physics.

It reached the boat and, instead of waiting to be grabbed, fused onto the dome on the top, transforming Serena’s fabricated escape pod into something else entirely.

The boat jolted forward so violently that every person stumbled.

Fin caught himself, crushing Serena against him, Tiberon’s boots sliding two inches across the gold floor before his weight caught. Gavriel dropped to one knee and grabbed onto the side of the vessel.

They were speeding across the lake like a golden bullet, headed towards the wall of a crater on the other side of the lake that was hundreds of feet above where they currently were.

All three men were wondering the same thing: how the fuck is this thing getting up there, and what is plan B, Serena?

The vampires were fast too, already at the lake’s edge where they’d been standing ten seconds ago and showing no intention of stopping.