Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
The mountain was losing its goddamn mind.
Viper didn’t need seismic readings or satellite telemetry to tell him they were out of time.
He felt it in the ground, the deep-bone vibrations that carried the rage of the earth itself.
It was flexing, coiling, breathing. A living thing, and he knew—he felt it in his soul—that the island was minutes away from unleashing all hell.
He stood with his boots braced wide on the basalt floor, sweat pouring down his spine, and watched the two figures at the center of the cavern work in silence as the air hummed around them. Although he mused it wasn’t exactly a hum—more like the resonance of a war drum held too long in check.
Trace was crouched low to the ground, his palm pressed flat against the stone as golden light pulsed from his skin in threads that crawled outward like lightning veins across the floor.
Beside him, towering, ancient, and utterly unfazed by the dying volcano above their heads, stood Fionn mac fucking Cumhaill.
The High King of the Fianna. The shit of Irish legend and ghost stories.
Except he wasn’t a story anymore. He was here.
He was real, and he radiated power so thick even Viper could feel it.
Fionn’s hands were bare and stained with something that might have been old blood or volcanic soot—or time itself, for all Viper knew.
He didn’t move like a man who’d been buried for centuries.
He moved like a pissed off god who was waking up mad at the world and found out the entire world as he knew it had changed.
Each motion looked like it was steeped in power as he carved new glyphs into the floor with the heel of his palm.
Viper strained his ears, trying to hear what he was whispering, but he didn’t understand one single word.
Trace’s voice echoed the rhythm beside Fionn.
Viper wasn’t sure if he was repeating the words the shifter’s king was saying, but the cadence, the flow, was almost identical, as if Trace was syncing his very breath to the spell being built around them.
The light from the glyphs began to twist, spiraling up in ribbons that shimmered between gold and blue.
One by one, they lifted from the rock, unfurling into the air like Fionn and Trace had yanked the stars down into the cave and snapped them into place mid-spin.
The heat of it hit like a second sun, causing the temperature to spike again, and Viper’s Shemagh was soaked to the seams.
Behind him, the team stood at the ready. Reaper and Kaze had their rifles slung, but their hands twitched near the grip. Zero looked like he wanted to punch something just to feel in control. Ward, the poor bastard, hadn’t blinked in so long that his eyes had to hurt like hell.
Juice stood next to Viper, one hand on Trace’s back, the other fisted tight like he could feel every flicker of magic rattling his mate’s bones.
“What the hell are they doing?” Viper muttered.
“Building a doorway between worlds,” Juice answered without looking at him.
Of course they are.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Another deep groan echoed through the mountain—closer, lower, hungrier.
Like the volcano knew their escape was near, and it wanted to taste blood before they got free.
Viper exhaled slowly, his hand tightening on the grip of his SIG.
If this were the end, they’d face it with their boots on.
But God help whoever tried to stop them when that portal opened.
The air cracked and whipped around them.
He didn’t need Juice to tell him the spell was close to completion.
He felt it in his goddamn teeth. The pressure shifted all at once, like the world took a breath and held it.
The light spiraling around Trace and Fionn then snapped into a vertical line, a glowing seam suspended in the air that flickered, then roared to life with a sound there were no words to describe as a portal opened.
Stargate, eat your fucking heart out.
A whirl of gold and cobalt spun like a vortex on its side, anchored to the glyphs burned into the basalt.
Viper watched it ripple outward, shimmering and unstable, as if the magic itself wasn’t convinced it should hold.
The air pulsed once, then twice, then steadied.
He felt the shift, like gravity itself was bending to accommodate what they were doing.
Fionn straightened and stepped back, his chest rising with each breath like the weight of centuries was sliding off his back.
Trace stayed crouched beside the spell work, the glow painting his sweat-slick skin in firelight.
His body trembled as if his muscles were locked tight with the strain of holding the connection open.
“Fionn?” Viper asked, low and sharp.
The ancient warrior turned, his eyes gleaming like twin moons behind storm clouds on what the Irish would call a grand soft day. “It will hold. But not for long.”
It will have to be enough.
For a second, Viper hesitated, but the volcano must have felt his indecision as he bellowed in fury again.
We might die either way.
At least this way, we have a chance to live.
“Team, move,” Viper barked. “Single file, eyes up. Weapons tight. Juice, you’re first through, take Sutherland with you.
” Maybe it was shitty to offer Juice up as a guinea pig, but he knew from the depths of his soul, there wasn’t a hope in hell Trace would allow his mate to go through the portal if the shifter didn’t believe it was safe for him to do so.
“No arguments here,” Juice said, grabbing the stunned archaeologist by the elbow and dragging him toward the spinning portal.
“Wait—what is that? Where does it go?” Ward yelped, his boots skidding on stone as he tried to dig in.
Fucked if I know.
“Through,” Viper snapped. “That’s all you need to know. It’s all any of us know.”
“But—”
Juice didn’t hesitate or allow Ward to stop him; he shoved them both into the light, and they vanished in a shimmer of heat and gold.
Jesus. I hope I didn’t just kill my best friend by sending him through that shit.
Behind him, the mountain cracked again—this time louder than it ever had before. Hot wind screamed down the tunnel like a freight train, ash pouring in behind it. The pyroclastic flow had breached the seal.
“Kaze, Reaper, go!” Viper shouted.
They didn’t argue. Kaze was halfway there before Reaper even moved, both men sprinting across the cavern floor with the smooth efficiency of warriors trained for a hundred worst-case scenarios. This was the one that topped them all.
Only Zero lingered, glancing at the spell, then at Viper. “You next, Boss.”
Viper shook his head. “Not until Trace and Fionn go through.”
“You sure about that?” Zero asked.
“No,” Viper muttered. “But we don’t leave anyone behind. Not here. Not like this.”
“I need to go last,” Fionn said. “Hound, go be with your Grá Croí.”
A deep growl rolled out from across the floor, and instead of Trace, his shifter side, Bran stepped forward. Fionn raised a hand toward his hound, the two of them locking eyes one final time. Then Bran turned, muscles taut, and crossed toward the light.
Viper folded his fist into the front of Zero’s vest and dragged him to the portal. “Until Valhalla, brother,” he whispered, and shoved him in before following him into their last chance at survival.
Crossing the threshold was like getting hit in the chest with a battering ram.
His vision whited out. Every nerve screamed as the world turned inside out—sight, sound, and balance were all gone in a rush of heat and weightless cold.
Then he could breathe for a moment until pain sucked all the air from his lungs again.
Finally, after longer than he’d hoped, the pain receded, and he sucked air into his aching lungs.
He hit the ground hard, boots skidding across rough, loose, moss-covered stones.
The roar of the collapsing mountain behind them vanished like a door slammed shut, and silence pressed in like he’d packed cotton in his ears.
No ash.
No volcano.
I’ll take it .
The first thing he registered was air—clean, dry, and heavy with the scent of moss and damp.
His lungs dragged it in, greedy. The second was light—twilight, not the burning glare of molten sky.
Pale violet stretched overhead, like the sun had dipped beneath the horizon but hadn’t finished saying goodbye.
He rolled to one knee, gun still in hand out of instinct, and scanned the area.
The others had landed in a loose arc. Juice crouched over Ward, muttering something low and fast as he helped the man to his feet. Reaper was checking Kaze, who looked dazed but alive. Zero was already up, sweeping their perimeter with his weapon raised and locked.
Where the hell are Bran and Fionn?
As if the portal heard his thoughts, it spat out Bran.
The massive wolf landed with a snarl, his paws digging grooves into the moss-covered ground.
Power rolled off him in waves. It felt… protective.
Feral, yes, but not wild. The wolf raced to Juice and sniffed all of him that he could reach as if reassuring himself that his mate was unscathed.
Then he turned a slow circle, nose lifted, ears flicking as he processed this new place.
“Where’s Fionn?” Viper spun toward the portal and frowned at how small it looked compared to a couple of moments before. “Shit, is it collapsing? Fionn? Fionn Mac Cumhaill, get your ass through the fucking hole. Now.”
“There is no need to bellow.” Fionn didn’t stumble or fall as he stepped through.
The man emerged like a storm given human form, with his shoulders squared, his gaze sharp as obsidian, and every inch of him bleeding power.
The portal hissed behind him, flaring once more before snapping shut with a low thump that echoed into the strange twilight.
No way back now.
Are we fucked?
Jeez, how is this happening?