The stone beneath her hand rippled. Actually rippled, the solid rock moving like water disturbed by a dropped stone, concentric circles spreading outward from her palm in waves that turned black obsidian translucent, then gold, then gone.

An entry formed in the wall.

It opened like a wound in the mountain, a narrow archway carved from nothing, edges still glowing with the gold residue of whatever language she’d spoken. Warm air rushed through the gap, humid and dense, carrying the mineral smell of heated water and ancient stone.

The vampires were ten feet away. Both sides. Closing fast.

Gavriel didn’t hesitate.

He hooked his arm around Serena’s waist, yanked her off her feet, and dove through the opening.

SPLASH.

They hit water on the other side.

Warm water. Bath-warm. The kind of heat that swallowed them whole on impact, closing over their heads for one disorienting second before Gavriel’s hand found the back of her skull and hauled her face above the surface.

The archway slammed shut behind them.

CRACK.

Stone fused back together like it had never been open, the seam disappearing into solid rock in the span of a breath. The wall was whole. Seamless. As if the doorway had been a hallucination shared by two people who were too exhausted and too fucked up to question it.

On the other side, the scratching started.

Claws against stone. Dozens of them. Frantic, relentless, scraping and gouging at the sealed wall with the desperate fury of predators who had watched their meal disappear into solid rock. The sound filled the small space, a horrible, persistent SKRITCH SKRITCH SKRITCH that echoed off every surface.

Gavriel was on top of her.

His full weight pressed her into the shallow pool, one hand behind her head, fingers threaded through her wet hair, keeping her face above the waterline. His other arm braced against the submerged stone beside her, locked rigid, holding himself just high enough that he wasn’t crushing her but low enough that she could feel every hard line of his body against hers.

Steam curled around them in thick, lazy spirals.

The water glowed pink.

Soft, pulsing, luminous pink, the same color her eyes, radiating from the surface. Steam rose from it in waves. The cave was hot. Sauna-hot. The kind of heat that turned the air into something you had to chew before you could breathe it.

His chest heaved against hers. Every exhale spilled warm across her throat, his breath coming in ragged, open-mouthed pulls that she could feel more than hear.

Water lapped at their shoulders, their jaws, the edges of their tangled limbs. His heart hammered against her sternum, pounding through the soaked fabric of both their suits, fast and hard and entirely too close to her own.

Her eyes were still pink.

Gavriel felt his bruises and scrapes healing in real time from the water. The relief almost made him dizzy.

Under him, she blinked a few times, pink flickering to green.

The healing almost made her gasp as well.

The deep ache in her ribs fading, the raw scrapes on her palms knitting shut, the sore muscle in her shoulder releasing its death grip on her nerve endings one fiber at a time. The water was doing it. Pulling the damage out of her like drawing venom from a snakebite, replacing pain with warmth, injury with relief.

She’d seen this before.

The black sand dunes of Orosia. She had woken in Fin’s arms in a pink pool of water like this. It lit pink for her instead of gold.

She swallowed the memory down hard. Shoved it into the same locked box where she was keeping everything about Fin and Dex right now, because if she thought about them, about where they were, about the blood she’d seen on Dex’s suit or the blade in Fin’s side, she was going to break. And breaking was a luxury she couldn’t afford on a volcano with a job still left to do.

The scratching on the other side of the wall had stopped. Either the vampires had given up or the stone was too thick to hear them anymore. She didn’t care which. The silence was the first gift this mountain had given them all day.

Their breaths were sharp. Too close. Too real. His face was inches from hers, water dripping from his jaw onto her collarbone, green eyes bright in the pink glow, pupils still blown from adrenaline and something neither of them was going to name right now.

“Close call there,” she whispered, voice shaky.

“Which one?” Gav panted. “The vampires, the volcano, the possessed wall magic, or the part where I tackled you into a mystery hot tub inside a mountain? I want to make sure I’m ranking them correctly.”

Serena huffed a small laugh, both of them chest to chest in glowing pink water. The laugh felt like the first real breath she’d taken in hours. Like exhaling something toxic. Like remembering that surviving was allowed to feel good, even when the people you loved were still in danger.

The thick, unmistakable ridge of his cock was trapped between them, trapped by the soaked fabric of both their suits and the relentless press of his hips. It lay heavy and hot against the soft give of her lower stomach, the length of it unmistakable even through the thin layers. Every shallow breath he took made it shift, a slow, involuntary drag that sent a bright pulse of heat straight down between her legs.

Serena’s breath caught.

Before she could move or say anything, Gavriel tensed above her.

Every muscle in his body locked rigid against hers, a full-body clench that lasted one second, two, his jaw tightening, his breath catching mid-exhale like his lungs had forgotten how to finish the job.

Then he went slack.

Dead weight. His arm gave out, his hand slid from behind her head, and his full body collapsed against hers, pressing her into the shallow water with a heaviness that was wrong. Conscious people didn’t fall like that. Conscious people caught themselves.

“Gav?”

His eyes were closed and his face was slack.

She sat up fast, water sloshing around them, her arms locking around his torso, hauling him upright against her chest. His head lolled against her shoulder.

“Are you alright, Gav?” Her voice cracked on his name.

Nothing.

His breathing was shallow.