They ran for a while in silence before Serena stopped suddenly.

The jungle shook and a rumbling noise sounded in the distance.

Her eyes flared pink and her head snapped towards a rocky outcrop half-buried under vines.

Before anyone could ask, Serena blurred forward toward a slit in the stone, too small, too dark, too suspicious.

“Serena, wait, don’t—”

Too late.

She ducked and slid straight into the narrow opening like gravity was a suggestion.

“Serena!” Dexmon roared as he dove after her, his thermal weave armor scraping stone. The chute was steeper than it looked, more like a granite throat, and he skidded down with zero control over his speed.

Gavriel, Maelor, Aeron, and Hyran sprinted after but were forced to stop at the entrance; the shaft was too tight, too angled, too risky for all of them at once.

Dexmon dropped the final few feet. Hard. Hard enough that it made even him wince.

Serena was already on the ground below, dazed, brushing dirt from her hands, eyes adjusting to the dim cavern.

The pink in her eyes was gone and she looked as confused as Dex felt.

She barely had time to inhale.

TWANG. TWANG. TWANG.

A volley of arrows shot out of the darkness straight for her heart.

Dexmon’s instincts detonated. His arm hooked her waist and pulled her flat on the ground.

A gold dome slammed around them in the same second and the arrows ricocheted off his barrier with metallic shrieks.

Dexmon pulled Serena against his chest.

“You’ve got to stop scaring the shit out of me.”

He kissed her forehead.

Serena turned into his chest, arms wrapping around him. She wasn’t hiding the tremble in her body. Her eyes were red, breath shaking.

Above them, the chute produced a sound. The sound was Gavriel Sterling’s ass hitting granite at speed. His body shot out of the shaft at an angle that physics would describe as “uncontrolled descent” and Gavriel would describe as ’tactical entry.’ He landed on his back, slid four feet across the cavern floor, and came to a stop staring at the ceiling.

He lay there for two full seconds.

“Nailed it.”

He sat up. Ash still in his hair. Orange pulp still on his thermal weave suit. Ancient vampire dust coating his entire left side. He looked like a man who had been rolling through every bad decision this continent had to offer and had collected souvenirs from each one.

“You good?” he asked Serena, his voice shifting. The humor was still there, sitting on top of the concern the way it always did, the way Gavriel Sterling’s humor always sat on top of every real thing he felt, a lid on a pot that was always threatening to boil over.

Serena blinked back tears. Quick, fragile ones. Ones that Dexmon and Gavriel both felt in their chests. Both of their jaws tightened.

Then the entire cavern rumbled.

A deep, rolling vibration shook dust from the ceiling. The ground trembled under their feet as if something massive had landed on the surface. Or many somethings.

Serena stiffened.

“Dex…” she whispered, voice cracking. “That’s them coming back.”

Her panic surged down the matebond so intensely he felt it in his ribs.

“It’s okay, baby,” Dexmon said, voice firm. “They’ll have to go through me and my wolf if they want you, and that is absolutely never going to happen.”

“If we survive this, I’m telling this story at every feast for the rest of my life,” Gavriel added as he scanned the dark. “Frostborne, if you could refrain from being possessed for the rest of the day, that’d be stellar. My body has a limit and I’ve been treating it like a suggestion since the volcano.”

She let out a small laugh, tension easing in her chest slightly.

Runes carved into the stone flared in response to the vibrations above them, lighting up one by one like a sequence being awakened.

“What is this place?” Dexmon asked.

The chute answered with Hyran.

His voice arrived before his body did, echoing down the granite throat at full volume, the acoustic signature of a man whose complaints were load-bearing and whose loading had begun the second his body entered the shaft.

“WHEN I GET DOWN THERE, I AM IMPLEMENTING A RESTRAINING ORDER BETWEEN SERENA FROSTBORNE AND EVERY UNIDENTIFIED HOLE IN EVERY GODDAMN ROCK FORMATION ON THIS CONTINENT!”

He shot out of the chute, hit the cavern floor boots-first, stumbled three steps, caught himself on a stalagmite, and straightened with the battered dignity of a man whose professional career had been reduced to chasing a girl through geological orifices.

His eyes found Serena immediately.

“A hole, Serena. Possessed Serena saw a dark hole in a rock wall on a vampire continent and her FIRST instinct was to SLIDE INTO IT. Head first. Without STOPPING. Without LOOKING. Without consulting the man who has dedicated his PROFESSIONAL LIFE to keeping her ALIVE.” He was breathing hard. Leaves were still in his hair from the jungle. “What did we discuss? What was the ONE rule? EXPLICIT. VERBAL. AUTHORIZATION.”

“She didn’t know what she was doing,” Dex said immediately.

“Possessed Serena knew EXACTLY what she was doing. I am saying it for both versions of Serena,” Hyran snapped.

The chute produced Maelor next. His descent was accompanied by a sound that could only be described as silk dying. His robes caught on every edge the granite had to offer, the shredding continuous, the fabric surrender audible.

He landed on one knee. Stood. Surveyed his robes. The robes were beyond ruined. They had entered a new category of destruction that required vocabulary Maelor had to invent.

“I have reached the final stage,” he announced to the cavern. “Grief. Acceptance. Fury. I have cycled through all of them and landed on a fourth that combines the worst elements of all three.” His eyes found Serena. “You. You slid into a ROCK. A rock, Serena. This entire continent is attempting to eat us and you slid into its MOUTH.”

“It worked out,” Gavriel said with a shrug.

“’It worked out’ is the epitaph on the tombstone of every person who has ever entered a hole without consulting a mage, and I will chisel it MYSELF.”