Chapter 29 #2
The second Saber had moved to Milo’s table, her claws making quick work of his restraints. The chef stirred, moaning softly, but didn’t wake. Elsa found herself grateful for his unconsciousness—no one should have to relive this hell while still trapped inside it.
“Did it work?” Elsa heard herself ask. The navigator in her brain was already cataloguing, already calculating, already seeing the implications spiraling outward like cracks in ice.
“Sometimes.” Rowan sat up slowly, swaying, his punctured arms crossing over his chest like he could hold himself together through sheer will.
“Small doses. Brief contact. The corruption would...fade. A little. Not enough.” His jaw tightened.
“Never enough for him. He kept increasing the exposure. Kept taking our blood to study what made it work. Kept—”
His voice broke. He looked away, but not before Elsa saw the shine of tears he was too exhausted to shed.
The Saber lifted Milo over her shoulder with surprising gentleness. Her amber eyes met Elsa’s, heavy with understanding that needed no words.
This is what they wanted her for. This is what they would have done.
“Can you walk?” Elsa asked Rowan, her voice steadier than she felt.
He answered by swinging his legs off the table and standing. His knees buckled immediately, and she caught him, his weight settling against her shoulder. He smelled of blood and fear and the chemical sweetness that permeated everything in this nightmare space.
“I can run if I have to.” The ghost of his old stubbornness flickered in his ravaged face. “Where’s the exit?”
“Up and to the right. Stay between the Sabers. Don’t stop for anything.”
She turned to leave, then stopped. The vials. The blood samples. The careful documentation of Vask’s experiments, preserved in glass and iron and suffering.
“Destroy it,” she said to the remaining Saber. “All of it. Don’t leave him anything to rebuild from.”
The Saber’s smile was all teeth. “With pleasure.”
They’d made it halfway back through the secondary passage when the world went sideways.
The attack came from above—a shape dropping from a ventilation shaft Elsa hadn’t noticed, landing between her and the Sabers with a crash that shook the tunnel.
Not Vask.
Bigger. Broader. Armor scarred from years of violence, dented and worn in ways that spoke of countless fights survived. Dark gray fur, almost black at the tips. Amber eyes that held the flat patience of a predator who enjoyed his work.
Krix. The priest’s shadow. The one who had held Milo’s hands against corrupted cores while the chef screamed. The one who had drawn Rowan’s blood in neat, methodical rows.
“The priest’s pet project,” he purred, straightening to his full height. “Trying to slip away before the demonstration.” His gaze swept over the Sabers, over Rowan and Milo, before settling on Elsa. “Vask will be disappointed he missed this.”
He doesn’t know.
The realization settled cold in her chest. Krix had no idea his master was already dead—that Sylas had crushed Vask’s throat in that holding cell while witnesses watched.
The Sabers lunged. Krix moved faster—a blur of fur and claws that sent one crashing into the wall and caught the other by the throat. He held her there, choking, while his gaze stayed locked on Elsa.
“Run,” the pinned Saber gasped, her claws scraping uselessly at Krix’s grip. “Human—run—”
Elsa didn’t run.
She stepped forward, placing herself between Krix and the two humans slumped over the Sabers’ shoulders behind her, and lifted her chin. “Let them go.”
Krix laughed—a sound like rocks grinding together.
“Or what? You’ll purify me?” He dropped the Saber, who collapsed gasping, and stalked toward Elsa with the patience of someone who knew his prey had nowhere to go.
“I watched what you did to that core. Vask thinks you’re Lux’s blessing made flesh.
I think you’re a freak who got lucky.” His claws flexed, scarred knuckles cracking. “Let’s test which of us is right.”
The blow came without warning—a backhand that caught her across the face and sent her spinning into the wall. Pain exploded through her skull, white-hot and blinding. She tasted blood, felt it running warm from her split lip, her cheekbone already swelling.
And somewhere deep inside her chest, something snapped awake.
The bond.
It roared to life like a furnace, flooding her with heat and fury that wasn’t entirely her own. She could feel Sylas through it, feel his rage spiking like a blade through her consciousness, feel him turning toward her with every instinct screaming.
Krix grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off her feet.
“You are nothing but a weak pet blessed by the goddess.” His voice dropped, almost wondering.
“I can smell him on you—his mark, his claim.” His claws dimpled her skin, drawing pinpricks of blood.
“When I bring you back to Vask, he’ll be happy to finally be able to—”
Something cracked inside her. Not bone. Something deeper.
The bond pulsed—Sylas’s rage pouring through her like molten iron, filling the hollow spaces where fear should have lived.
She felt his fury, his desperation, his absolute refusal to lose her.
And beneath it, something older. Wilder.
The predator instinct that had kept humans alive, preventing them from being prey.
Survive. Protect. Fight.
Elsa’s hands found the chain still attached to her wrist cuffs, the length of cold metal that had bound her since Vask’s guards had taken her. She’d almost forgotten it was there.
She didn’t forget now.
The bond screamed through her blood—not just Sylas’s rage anymore, but her own fury rising to meet it.
For Rowan, strapped to a table while they drained his blood.
For Milo, his hands burned black by corrupted tears.
For Mia and Ari, huddled in darkness for three days.
For herself, treated like a thing to be used and discarded.
Mine, something snarled in her chest. They’re mine, and you don’t get to touch them.
She swung.
The chain caught Krix across the face—not enough to hurt him, not really, but enough to surprise him. His grip loosened for a fraction of a second, and Elsa twisted free, dropping to the ground and rolling between his legs before he could grab her again.
“Get them out!” she screamed at the Sabers, scrambling to her feet. “Get Rowan and Milo out, NOW—”
Krix spun, his amber eyes blazing with fury. “You dare—”
Elsa swung the chain again. This time he caught it, yanked her forward, and she used the momentum—launching herself at him, legs wrapping around his torso, the chain looping over his head and across his throat.
He was massive. His claws found her thigh immediately, tearing through fabric and flesh, and she screamed—but she didn’t let go. Couldn’t let go. The bond roared approval, Sylas’s presence burning through her like wildfire, filling her with strength that had no business belonging to a human body.
Behind her, she could hear the Sabers moving, hear Rowan’s hoarse voice urging Milo forward. Every second she held on was a second they had to run.
“You don’t get to have them,” she snarled against Krix’s ear, and the voice that came out was barely human—too low, too fierce, shaped by the bond-fury flooding her veins. “You don’t get to touch them. You don’t get to hurt anyone else—”
Krix’s claws dug deeper. Her vision went white at the edges. But she could feel Sylas getting closer through the bond, could feel him running, could feel his terror and his pride tangled together into something that defied naming.
Hold on. I’m coming. Hold on.
She held on.
“That’s enough.”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, a growl so deep it seemed to resonate in the stone itself. Krix’s head snapped toward the source just as Sylas emerged from the shadows like a nightmare given form.
He wasn’t beautiful in this moment. He was terrifying—hackles raised, fangs bared, eyes blazing with a fury that had nothing human in it.
Blood of his enemies still matted the fur along his ribs from the fight in the holding cells.
The Alpha King unleashed, and the tunnel suddenly felt very, very small.
Krix went still beneath her. For one heartbeat—just one—something flickered in those amber eyes. Then he laughed, a wet, ugly sound.
“Alpha King. Come to watch your pet die? Vask will be pleased when I bring him your—”
“The priest is dead.”
Silence.
Elsa felt the change in Krix’s body—the sudden rigidity, the way his muscles locked. She loosened her grip on the chain just enough to breathe.
“You’re lying,” Krix said.
“His body is in the holding cells.” Sylas’s voice was flat, almost bored. “I crushed his throat myself. He died badly, if that matters to you.”
The enforcer’s claws flexed against Elsa’s thigh. His lips peeled back from teeth stained dark with old violence. “Vask was worth a hundred of you. He was doing Lux’s work—”
“He was torturing humans in a basement.” Sylas took a step forward, and the tunnel seemed to shrink around him.
“Drawing their blood. Burning their hands. Playing god with creatures who couldn’t fight back.
” Another step. “Your priest was a fanatic and a coward, and I killed him like the rabid animal he was.”
Krix roared.
The sound bounced off stone, deafening in the confined space. He threw Elsa off—actually threw her, sent her flying into the wall with force that drove the air from her lungs—and lunged at Sylas. No strategy, no calculation, just grief-blind rage hurling itself at the male who had taken everything.
Sylas met him halfway.
The collision shook loose dust from the ceiling.
Elsa struggled to breathe, her ribs screaming, but she forced herself to watch as the two Yzefrxyl tore into each other.
This fight was different from the one in the holding cells—faster, more vicious.
Krix wasn’t fighting to win. He was fighting to avenge.