The moment they moved together, the room reacted.

Creatures peeled from the walls in jerking spasms of stone and shadow, rushing them from every angle.

Gavriel met them head-on, blade flashing, body bruised and burning with effort. His calf was still bleeding from the echo corridor. His arms were scored from the chute.

Then he felt a weird sensation as Serena snapped a shield around them. It was warm. Internal. The feeling of something being drawn from his chest, pulled outward through his skin and into the air.

Rook: This is correct. Mate pulls magic from us.

She blinked a few times, stunned, then turned to him. “Gav, you—”

“Oh, right. I’m magical now too,” he said with a shrug.

“Since when?” she asked.

“Unclear. Possibly since the coma. Possibly since we landed on this volcano island. Possibly since birth and I just never noticed.”

“I didn’t mean to pull from you. I don’t know how or why—”

“I can’t control it, Serena. Pull from me all you want. I’ll be your battery.”

He flashed a grin. She grinned back and shook her head once.

“There she is. I saw another version of you smile at me. It was terrifying.”

They moved.

The shield bubble held for a good minute. Creatures hit the gold surface and bounced. The bouncing was satisfying. The satisfying was temporary because temporary was the only duration this corridor offered for anything good.

But then the walls began to hum. Low. Wrong. Like pressure building behind bone. More shapes lunged, too many. The shield was cracking. Serena’s magic was fading again, the reserves she’d pulled from Gavriel burning down at a rate that confirmed the corridor was escalating and the escalating was outpacing her ability to hold the line.

Rook made a game-time decision.

“SHIFT, SERENA.”

Gavriel heard himself give an Alpha command as his wolf forced a shift. The words came from his mouth with Rook’s frequency, Rook’s authority, Rook’s absolute conviction that this was the correct course of action and that consulting Gavriel about it was an unnecessary bureaucratic step.

A dark forest-green wolf stood in front of a bright flash, hackles raised.

In a flash of white light, Serena shifted right behind him. Aurelia hit the corridor floor on four legs, golden eyes finding Rook instantly, the recognition immediate, the immediate producing a calm in her posture that no amount of talking or holding or humor had achieved. Her wolf saw his wolf and the seeing was enough. The panic in her body downshifted from screaming to steady in under two seconds.

Gavriel: She can’t mindlink when she’s in wolf form. You know that.

Rook: I want to run with mate.

Gavriel: ARE YOU SERIOUS? SHE can’t HEAR us, Rook. This is not the time—

Rook: She does not need to hear us. She needs to run with us. Wolves run together. This is basic instinct. Pups know this. You are worse than a pup.

Gavriel: She doesn’t have wolf instincts, Rook. She pawed a wolf across the face to fight. That is her instincts.

Rook: Then we show mate.

His magic snapped around her, covering both. The gold shimmered across Rook’s dark green coat, weaving through his fur like light through leaves, the visual producing something that looked less like a shield and more like a declaration, and the declaration was written in a language that wolves understood and humans pretended they didn’t.

Rook: That is correct. Keep gold around her.

Gavriel: You hijacked my vocal cords to force an Alpha command for the second time today so you could go on a RUN.

Rook: A tactical run. Through a death corridor. With mate. Very different from a recreational run. Do not diminish my strategy.

Gavriel: Your strategy is “be near her in wolf form.”

Rook: And it is WORKING. Look. She is shifting. You are welcome.

His massive green wolf and her glowing white wolf moved together with unnerving precision, instincts meshing as if they’d done this a hundred times before.

Gavriel noticed it immediately, the way she anticipated his turns, the way he adjusted without thinking, how neither ever broke stride, covering blind spots and striking in tandem. Every movement was mirrored.

Every pivot was matched. The synchronization was effortless, automatic, the kind of coordination that took trained units years to develop and these two wolves had just produced it from nothing on the first run they had ever taken together.

Rook: See?

Gavriel: I see it.

Rook: She knows where I am going before I go. I know where she is turning before she turns. Do you know what that is called, Gavriel?

Gavriel: Instinct.

Rook: Wrong.

Gavriel: Training.

Rook: Wronger.

Gavriel: Compatible fighting styles developed through—

Rook: I am going to bite the inside of your skull. It is called MATE SYNCHRONIZATION. It has a NAME. The name has existed for ten thousand years. Every wolf in history runs like this with their mate. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. You are watching it happen RIGHT NOW with your own eyes and you are calling it “compatible fighting styles.” I am going to lose my mind.

Gavriel: Can you lose your mind AFTER we clear this corridor?

Rook: No. My mind is lost. The loss is permanent. You broke it with your denial.

They moved through the corridor like a single animal split into two bodies, the green and the white cutting a path through shadow and stone with the brutal elegance of wolves who were running together for the first time and running together as if they’d never run apart.

✦✦✦

THIRTY MINUTES LATER

Silence was what made both wolves run faster. It was wrong. The waiting was wrong. Corridors that had been attacking them nonstop for the last hour didn’t just stop, and the stopping was producing a tension in both wolves that was worse than the fighting because fighting was a problem with a solution and silence was a problem with a trap.

Serena’s wolf was mid-leap when the wall itself surged outward and slammed into her wolf with crushing force. Air exploded out of her lungs.

She hit the stone hard and shifted back into human form upon impact, involuntary. White light detonated as her wolf was ripped away by the collision.

Before she could move, the wall softened beneath her like wet clay. Hands formed and wrapped around her legs.

Rook: MATE!

The howl inside Gavriel’s skull was so loud it whited out every other thought. Rook’s fury and terror collided into a single frequency that was producing a vibration in Gavriel’s bones that felt like his skeleton was trying to tear itself apart from the inside.

He ran for her just as she screamed.

The sound was cut short as the stone closed over her mouth. One second she was there, fighting, screaming, visible. The next second the wall had absorbed her the way water absorbs a stone thrown into it, the surface rippling once and then going smooth, as if she had never been standing there at all.

Rook slammed into the wall, claws tearing stone as he skidded to a stop. His claws gouged, ripping at the surface that had swallowed her.

There was nothing left to reach. She was already gone.