Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Ward’s scream tore itself loose from the cage of his chest before he could stop it.
He wasn’t the screaming type. He’d held a fractured leg in the Andes, kept it together through active gunfire outside a dig in Kurdistan.
Stood toe-to-toe with Egyptian bureaucrats so corrupt they made the mob look like Boy Scouts.
But this—this wasn’t something a PhD in archaeology or linguistics prepared him for.
The man in front of him—Trace, they’d called him—had become a wolf.
Not in some spiritual, metaphorical, shapeshifter-lore-on-a-scroll kind of way.
No. This was as real as on freaking TV. One second, there was a man dressed in a military uniform carrying big ass guns standing in front of the glyphs, and the next, thick black fur rippled down his arms, his limbs snapped and folded inward with bone-deep cracks, and where a man had stood, a massive wolf, too big for any known species, shook out his fur.
That’s not possible. That’s not possible.
His brain kept chanting it like a fucking rosary.
That’s not ? —
He stumbled backward until his boot caught on a jagged outcrop and he went down hard, his Indy-pack smacking against stone as he landed.
His breath caught in his throat, panic threatening to break through his ribs.
“No. No, no, no,” he whispered, unable to tear his eyes away.
Viper didn’t look alarmed. None of them looked afraid. Why were they not losing their minds?
They knew.
Ward blinked as his rational mind shoved itself into overdrive, fighting for purchase in the chaos.
His adrenaline spiked as his instincts tried to slap a label on the impossible.
Was he having a hallucination or a psychotic break?
Was the volcanic gas making him high? He searched for something—anything—that made this make sense.
Because magic didn’t exist. Shifters were legends and belonged in books.
Yet here he was, watching something that should be anatomically, physically, historically, and universally impossible stare at him like it had a soul.
“Easy, easy.” The leader, Viper, the others had called him, reached for him. “I know it’s all kinds of fucked up, and you’ve never seen anything like it before, but that’s Bran, and he won’t hurt you.”
“B—Bran?”
“Yeah.” Viper reached for him, and Ward jerked away from him again. “Do you turn into a snake?”
“Nope.” His teeth were white in the darkness of his close-trimmed beard. “I swear, Viper’s just a nickname. I’m human.”
“You cannot be human.” A disembodied voice spoke from within the crack in the wall. “None of you would be alive in here if you were human.”
“Who the fuck—” Viper shot to his feet and spun with his weapon raised and pointed at the crack in the wall before the voice finished speaking.
The wolf—Bran, they called him Bran—whipped his head toward Viper. His lip curled upward, and he snarled viciously.
“Juice, what the hell?” Viper asked the man Ward thought was his second in command.
“I don’t know, Bran is losing his fucking mind in my head. Something about the Dord Fiann hunting horn sounding for the third time.”
The legends say that’s when Fionn will rise again.
Holy shit.
Holt sweet baby shitballs.
This cannot be real.
I’ve gone insane.
“You are the Grá Croí of my hound?” the voice rumbled low from the other side of the crack in the stone. It sounded rusty, as if the man hadn’t used it in a very long time. The gravelly grating of it made the hair on the back of Ward’s neck stand straight. That voice carried weight. Power. Age.
Juice blinked, frozen for a breath. “I—I think he’s talking to me.
” He cocked his head to one side and ran his fingers over the wolf’s fur just behind his ears.
“Bran says yes,” he said out loud, blinking rapidly.
“He’s freaking the fuck out. He’s pacing inside my damn head. I can’t filter him clearly.”
“Try,” Viper ordered, his tone low and sharp. “Tell us what Bran is saying.”
Bran moved before Juice could answer, snarled, spun, and lunged at the wall. The sound of his claws scraping against the stone was like knives dragged down a chalkboard. His massive shoulder slammed into the crack, teeth bared, tail rigid.
“He’s trying to widen it.” Juice stepped back.
He pressed his hand to his temple as if his head ached.
“He’s saying something’s wrong. He thinks the chamber’s incomplete.
I think it’s fractured or something.” Juice was clearly frustrated.
“He’s talking so fast, and half in Irish.
I’m only catching every second or third word. ”
“Bran,” Viper demanded. “Stop.”
But Bran didn’t. He backed up and launched himself again. This time he hit the seam with a sickening crunch. Chips of basalt rained down in his wake. Ward flinched as one skittered across the floor near his boot.
“Bran, that won’t help,” Juice shouted, his voice fraying at the edges. “He’s in something. It’s not a room—it’s like a cage. A magical fucking seal.
“It is a prison bound by druid stone binding magic,” the voice said. “I do not have the magic to break it, as my power was drained before they enchanted this place.” While he spoke, Bran kept frantically clawing at the opening. “But with my hound’s help, I may be able to do it.”
“Stop him before he kills himself,” Reaper growled.
“He won’t stop.” Juice turned toward the crack and raised his voice. “Who are you? Who the hell are you?”
“I am Fionn mac Cumhaill,” the voice answered. “High King of the Fianna. Son of Cumhaill. Last Guardian of Ireland, and I have slept too long beneath a sky not my own. The Dord Fiann called me from my slumber, and I answered the call.”
Ward’s pulse surged so loudly in his ears, he could barely hear himself think.
Fionn mac Cumhaill?
That’s not possible.
That isn’t even remotely fucking possible .
Excitement and disbelief warred inside him. “I told you.” His voice cracked as he stood slowly, not taking his eyes off the crack in the wall. “These symbols, this mountain. It’s a prison. That’s the king they bound. He didn’t cross into Tír na nóg with the rest of his men.”
“They bound him to the stone.” Juice’s voice had gone quiet, haunted.
“Bran says… he was betrayed. Trapped here by someone he trusted. Some druids ambushed him before he could follow the Fianna across the veil.” Juice cracked a smile.
“He is bitching at Fionn for getting drunk and trying to cross the Boyne.”
Bran let out a long, shuddering howl and slumped forward, pawing at the edge of the crack like a wolf mourning at a grave.
Fionn’s voice came again, rougher this time, the cadence slow and tired. “No other voice has reached me in millennia. Not even the wind. But the hound… he carries the key to the curse in his bloodline.”
“He means Bran,” Juice whispered. “Somehow, because of his DNA or family, Bran carries the last of the Fianna’s link to Fionn. That’s how the chant broke the barrier.”
“But then why can’t we get him out?” Kaze asked.
Bran whined and pressed his shoulder to the stone, shaking with the effort to force it open again. The wall glowed faintly beneath his paws, runes flickering in pale gold along the seam, but the crack held.
“He says he’s not supposed to come out in this world.” Juice blinked. “Bran asks if there is some sort of key that wasn’t part of the glyphs Sutherland deciphered.”
Ward ran a hand through his hair, heart still racing. “There wasn’t more. I searched every damn inch.”
“Not carved,” Juice murmured. “That’s what Bran’s saying now. It might not be written in stone. It had to come from the soul from deep within . ”
“Within who?” Viper demanded.
“By the brother. The second in the chant.” Juice touched the wolf. “Bran gave blood. That fulfilled the oath of the hound.”
“Then the rest falls to him,” Fionn said, his voice like gravel and wind. “The one who leads the Hound’s Grá Croí. The one who chooses no throne, but serves his brothers.”
“Viper,” Juice whispered.
Ward’s gaze snapped toward Viper as the weight of the moment sank in.
“It can’t be me,” Viper insisted. “The only ones who could cross the fairy protection line at your den, Bran, were Juice and Reaper. You said that meant I had no fairy blood… right?”
“He says there are other things than fairies, Boss.” Juice winced and braced himself against Bran when the ground rumbled in fury.
“Shit, can we hurry up? Because I don’t want to die in here.
” His comment drew a vicious snarl from the wolf, who crowded his mate against the wall as if he could protect him.
“Only a druid warrior was ever meant to enter this place,” Fionn said, the rumble of his voice drifting through the split stone like it carried the memory of storms. “Not one of robes or chants, but a true warrior. One whose blood serves the ancient mark of the Triad. The Triple Oath. Earth beneath his feet. Sky above his soul. Sea flowing through his veins.”
“Earth, sky, and sea.” Juice blinked. “Wait a sec. Do you know what we get if we move those around?”
“I don’t fucking know, Juice. Explain it to me,” Viper grumbled. “I don’t come here for twenty fucking questions, I came to kill the bastard who took my team brother.”
“Bran says, and I quote,” he made an inverted commas symbol in the air, “that is why you are the warrior foretold to open the lock.”
“Break it down Barney-style, o’Leary,” Viper ordered.
“Sea, Air, and Land…”
Viper’s brow drew down tight, a low breath escaping his lungs like something old had just clicked into place. “SEAL? But that could mean any of us. We are all SEALs, Bran.”