Chapter 26 #2
For a long moment, Ryxin said nothing. His jaw worked, fangs pressing against his lower lip hard enough that Sylas caught the faint copper scent of blood. Then, slowly, his brother exhaled—a sound like pressure releasing from something that had been wound too tight for too long.
“What do you need from me?”
“I need you visible. Furious. Demanding answers from the council while accomplishing nothing.” Sylas watched understanding dawn in Ryxin’s expression—the tactical calculation replacing raw fury.
“Let them watch you rage. Let them think you’re the threat they need to contain.
While they’re focused on managing your anger, they won’t be looking for mine. ”
“A distraction.”
“A weapon.” Sylas allowed himself a grim smile. “You’ve always been better at rage than I have. Use it.”
Something shifted between them. Not friendship—they’d traveled too far down the road of rivalry for that—but something adjacent.
An understanding that transcended the decades of challenge and counter-challenge.
Their females were taken. Their territories violated.
Whatever history lay between them, this was not a battle they could afford to fight separately.
Ryxin’s nod was sharp, decisive. “I’ll give them a performance worthy of the court’s attention. But when you find them—when you find her—you tell me. Before you move.”
“Agreed.”
His brother held his gaze for a beat longer, searching for deception, then turned and stalked from the chamber. His tail caught the door frame on the way out—deliberate, theatrical, the kind of temper display that would be witnessed and whispered about within the hour.
Sylas watched him go, then returned his attention to the remaining males.
“Vor. You’ll lead the tracking. Start from the junction where the scent trail went cold and work outward. Don’t follow obvious paths—look for the routes someone would take if they wanted to avoid detection. Think like prey that knows it’s being hunted.”
The tracker dipped his head in acknowledgment. “The sedative compound they used leaves traces. Whoever applied it had to carry it, store it, clean their equipment afterward. If I can find where they prepared—”
“You can find where they went.” Sylas nodded. “Do it.”
“Keth, Dren. You’re with me. We’ll work the political angles—identify which pit administrators might be persuaded to share information about unusual activity in their sectors. Not overtly. Questions asked in passing, observations gathered without appearing to gather them.”
Keth’s massive shoulders shifted in what might have been a shrug. “Some of the administrators owe debts. Gambling, mostly. Favors they’d rather not have examined too closely.”
“Then remind them gently what happens to debtors who prove unhelpful.”
“And me, my King?” Hask asked quietly.
“You stay close to the religious quarters. Treat minor ailments, offer your services to the faithful. Listen to what they say when they think no one important is paying attention.” Sylas paused, meeting the healer’s steady gaze.
“And prepare supplies for three human females who may have been held without adequate care. Whatever they need to survive extraction and recovery.”
Hask’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture suggested approval. “Human physiology is fragile in ways most Yzefrxyl don’t understand. Dehydration, shock, infections that would barely slow one of us down can kill them within days. I’ll prepare accordingly.”
“Good.”
The males filtered out through the chamber’s secondary exit—a passage that led to maintenance corridors rather than main thoroughfares, paths that would let them disperse without being seen leaving together.
Sylas remained at the map, claws tracing routes he’d memorized as a pup and hadn’t thought about in decades.
The under-fortress sprawled beneath the keep like the roots of some vast, dark tree.
Passages that served no official purpose anymore, chambers that had been sealed after the last war with the Fallen, corridors that connected the religious quarters to the labor pits through routes that bypassed all standard checkpoints.
His ancestors had built redundancy into everything—escape routes, supply lines, hidden ways to move through territory that enemies might think they controlled.
Now someone was using that same architecture against him.
Sylas closed his eyes and reached for the bond again.
Still nothing. The chemical dampening that had severed his awareness of Elsa remained in place, a wall between them that no amount of instinct could pierce.
But he’d felt her before the silence fell.
Felt her determination, her stubborn refusal to break, the way she’d looked at him with those defiant human eyes when he’d given her the small freedoms that had led to this disaster.
She was still fighting. He was certain of it. Whatever Vask had planned for her, Elsa wouldn’t go quietly. Wouldn’t submit. Would map every corridor, count every step, file away every detail that might help her survive until—
Until he found her.
The court wanted to see how the Alpha King would respond to having his mate taken.
They expected fury—public, destructive, the kind that proved human females had weakened Yzefrxyl leadership.
They expected political advantage, ammunition for challenges and coups and all the petty power games that had defined this fortress since the first stone was laid.
Let them expect.
Sylas pushed away from the map and moved toward the chamber’s hidden exit.
The torches guttered as he passed, shadows stretching to meet him like old friends.
In the public halls, he would be the measured king—deliberating, consulting, appearing to gather information through proper channels while actually accomplishing nothing useful.
But in the dark places beneath the fortress, where the light didn’t reach and the old ways still held power, he would be something else entirely.
Something that Vask and his faithful would learn to fear.
His claws flexed, and somewhere deep in his chest, where the bond should have hummed with Elsa’s presence, the hollow space filled with something darker.
Something patient. Something that had ruled this fortress before mercy became an option, before politics softened the edges of power, before anything existed except the hunt and the kill and the satisfaction of tearing apart whatever stood between a predator and his chosen prey.
The enemy wanted to see the Alpha King lose control.
They were about to learn the difference between losing control and choosing to let the leash slip.