Gavriel: Fuck.

He hadn’t meant to push it through the link. It tore out of him anyway. One word carrying the weight of a man whose hands had been holding her two minutes ago and whose two minutes had been converted to zero by a wall that ate people and whose eating was producing a fury in his chest that was making his vision blur at the edges.

A heartbeat later, Fin’s voice cut in, sharp and immediate.

Fin: What happened?

The question was two words. The two words were carrying the controlled fury of an Alpha who had been separated from his mate for over an hour, had portaled across a continent to reach her, and was now receiving reports that the corridor had swallowed her into a wall. Fin’s control was a masterwork. The masterwork was cracking.

Gavriel shifted back. His fists hit the stone where his claws had been. Human hands on cold rock. He forced his breathing steady before answering.

Gavriel: The walls took Serena. I had her and… fuck.

The sentence broke on the last word. He didn’t finish it because the finishing required him to say “I lost her” and saying “I lost her” would make it true and the true was a weight he couldn’t carry and think at the same time, and thinking was the only thing that was going to get her back.

Silence.

Then Fin pushed again, raw beneath the control.

Fin: Serena? Can you hear us?

Silence.

Dexmon’s voice cut through next, clipped and focused. Command register. Zero emotion. The Dexmon that existed beneath the prince and the mate and the man, the version that ran wars and moved units and processed tactical information with the same detachment a surgeon processes anatomy.

Dexmon: What was happening when it took her?

Gavriel: Dark constructs were attacking us, then the walls warped. They softened, grabbed her, and sealed. The whole thing took about three seconds. She couldn’t fight it because the stone was absorbing her power on contact.

Fin swore under his breath. The swearing was barely audible on the mindlink but the barely was enough to confirm that Finnick Shadowclaw’s composure had sustained damage and the damage was being managed but the management was expensive.

Fin: Is that near the stone infants from hell?

Gavriel: Immediately after them. Same corridor.

Fin: We passed that section earlier. We’re holding position. There’s another mural ahead. White wolf, split spine, embedded runes along the arch. We’ll wait for you.

The directions were clean. Military. Fin was operating on training and instinct and the specific muscle memory of a man who had memorized the layout of hostile terrain while sprinting through it, because memorizing terrain was what Alpha Kings did and what Alpha Kings did was the only reason any of them had a chance of finding her.

Gavriel didn’t hesitate.

Gavriel: I’m on my way.

He ran. The corridor was quiet now. The quiet was the quiet of a thing that had gotten what it wanted and was digesting, and the digesting was Serena, and the Serena was somewhere inside these walls, unconscious or trapped or fighting or all three, and the all three was producing a speed in Gavriel’s legs that was exceeding anything his body had produced today, and his body had produced a lot.

Rook: We will get her back.

Gavriel: I know.

Rook: We will get her back because she is ours and the walls do not get to keep what is ours.

Gavriel: I said I know, Rook.

Rook: Good. Because if the walls keep her, I will eat this entire corridor. Stone by stone. Starting with the section that touched her. I want you to understand that this is a literal statement and I have the jaw for it.

He reached the mural in under two minutes.

Fin was there. Aeron. Hyran. Maelor. Four people standing in front of a carved white wolf whose spine was split open and whose runes were embedded along the arch above it, the mural a ten-thousand-year-old warning about what this corridor did to wolves who carried Serena’s bloodline.

Fin looked at Gavriel. Assessed. Blood on his calf. Scrapes on his arms. Eyes gold at the edges. The assessment took one second.

“You look like hell.”

✦✦✦

ONE HOUR LATER

No one had heard or seen Serena. But Gavriel, Fin, and Dex all felt her. Pure terror and panic pulsed through in erratic spikes. Sharp, breathless, wrong. It surged and fell and surged again, like she was running out of time in fragments.

Dexmon tore through the corridor in wolf form. It was clear the temple was learning as they went. It kept adapting and getting smarter.

Gold magic erupted from Aegon in violent bursts. The gold was getting easier. Dexmon had figured out how to find his magic somewhere between the third near-death experience and the fifth.

Aegon was fully in control now, but Dexmon was still there, riding shotgun, and ’making the gold go boom.’ He had even started to aim. Gold flared from his wolf’s chest, hitting things as they ran.

Aegon: Your aim is terrible.

Dex: I hit the target.

Aegon: You hit the wall NEXT to the target. The target was three feet to the left. I am embarrassed for us.

Dex: I destroyed the thing, Aegon.

Aegon: You destroyed the thing with SPLASH DAMAGE. That is the magical equivalent of throwing a rock at a barn and bragging that you hit the barn. The barn is enormous. You are supposed to hit the DOOR.

Dex: We are in a death corridor and you are grading my marksmanship.

Aegon: Mate would have hit the target.

Dex: I will practice aim AFTER we find her.

Aegon: Good. I am embarrassed.

Dex: AEGON.

His wolf locked onto her scent and they were close. Then something else slammed into him. This was the closest thing to physical he had felt from her since she put that damn necklace on. Was she… was she having a panic attack?

The answer arrived through his ribcage. Yes.

He wasn’t the only one who noticed. Fin’s voice cut through the mindlink immediately.

Fin: Serena. Can you hear us?

Nothing.

Dexmon and Aegon caught the flash of pink up ahead, sharp and frantic. His heart slammed hard against his ribs.

Then he saw her just as the floor gave way beneath her.

She caught herself on a stone. Her fingers white-knuckled on the edge, her body dangling over a void that was dark and deep and producing an updraft that smelled like old death.

Hands erupted from the ground. Dexmon shifted back mid-sprint and gold magic detonated out of his body. The hands exploded apart as he skidded across the stone, scooped her up in one fluid motion, and turned, already moving.

The corridor flinched.

For one full second, nothing attacked. The walls held. The floor held. The tendrils retreated. The gold magic Dexmon had just produced was carrying a frequency that made the ancient architecture pause, recalibrate, and reconsider, and the reconsidering bought them exactly the second they needed.

She was gasping for air. Each breath was a fight. Each inhale was a war between her lungs and her panic and her panic was winning and the winning was producing a sound that was half wheeze and half sob and fully the worst sound Dexmon Drakenfell had ever heard in his life.