Chapter Fourteen
Lucas
Their scent hit me first.
Sweat. Fur. Blood.
Shifters.
I turned just as they came barreling through the entrance, their forms massive in the dim torchlight. The first one lunged. A wolf, shifting mid-air, extended his claws as his bones cracked and twisted. I was already moving. My body reacted before my mind had fully caught up.
I met him head-on, grabbing his throat mid-leap and slamming him into the stone wall with a sickening crunch. He yelped as he slumped to the floor, but I didn’t have time to finish him. Another was on me in an instant.
I ducked as a clawed hand slashed through the air, missing my face by an inch. The bastard was fast, but I was faster. I twisted, catching his wrist, and wrenched it backward until I heard the pop of bone snapping. His scream was lost in the chaos.
Kael was a blur beside me, his blade flashing, cutting through flesh and fur with the precision of a trained killer. Blood sprayed against the cavern walls as he cut down another wolf that had dared to lunge for Annika.
Annika.
I turned, looking for her. She moved like fire, fluid and untouchable. Her trusty dagger was in her hand, and her strikes were fast and deliberate. A shifter lunged, and she sidestepped smoothly, dragging her blade across his ribs in one clean motion. He collapsed at her feet, howling in pain.
Pride and fury warred in my chest. She was strong. But she shouldn’t have to do this. Not with me around.
I snarled, turning my focus back to the fight.
Another shifter charged me. It was a bear this time, bigger and meaner, his fangs baring as he roared. I let him come. At the last second, I ducked low, driving my shoulder into his ribs. He stumbled, and I used the opening to sink my fist into his gut, then brought my knee up into his face. Bone shattered beneath the impact, and he collapsed.
More were coming.
I wiped the blood from my mouth and let the monster inside me rise fully. My fangs lengthened, my vision sharpened, the scent of their sweat and fear intoxicating. My muscles tensed. Coiled, ready. If they wanted a fight, I’d give them one.
A beast came from my right. I twisted just as his jaws snapped for my throat, catching him mid-air and wrenching his head to the side. A sharp crack echoed through the chamber. He went limp.
Another came. Then another.
I tore through them, blood hot, body moving on instinct. They were strong, but I was stronger. Faster. Deadlier.
“Lucas!” Annika screamed my name through the chaos.
It wasn’t a cry of pain. It was a warning, a plea for help.
I turned, but I was too late. A shadow moved behind her. A blur of darkness wrapped around her, swallowing her whole. One second, Annika was there, her daggers raised, fire in her eyes. The next, she was gone.
Vanished.
“No—!”
I lunged, claws scraping against stone as I reached for the space where she had been, but there was nothing. No trace of her. No scent. No heat. Just empty air and the echo of my own ragged breath.
A howl rose above the chaos. A signal. A retreat.
The few shifters still standing hesitated, then turned and ran, disappearing into the darkness of the cave.
Kael cursed behind me, wiping the blood off his blade against his pants. “What the hell was that?”
I barely heard him. My mind was roaring, my pulse pounding like war drums in my ears. Annika was gone. Taken.
I forced myself to breathe, to think.
Shifters couldn’t do that. They fought with claws and teeth, brute force and bloodshed. This was something else. Something worse.
The Shadow Bride.
My rage turned ice cold. She had done this.
I turned sharply, scanning the cave, listening. Where had she taken her? Where was she hiding?
The silence mocked me.
I exhaled through clenched teeth, trying to grasp the situation. My body was still burning from the fight, my muscles aching from the battle we had just barely won, but none of that mattered.
Annika was gone. And I had let it happen.
Kael stepped up beside me. I felt his hand on my shoulder. “Lucas. We need to move. now.”
I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. My hands were still clenched, shaking with rage, with failure.
She had been right in front of me. Right there.
And I had lost her.
I hurried past him toward the passageway that led us here. The cave twisted around us, an unholy labyrinth of stone and shadows. Every tunnel looked the same, every turn leading to more darkness. I felt as if it wasn’t just a cave, but actually a trap, meant to keep us here forever.
I forced myself to keep going, listening to the sound of Kael’s boots scuffing against the uneven ground behind me.
“This place isn’t natural,” I heard him say.
“No shit,” I muttered, scanning the walls. There were no markings, no signs, just endless rock. “We’ve passed this same damn formation twice.”
Kael glanced back the way we came. “It’s shifting.”
I stilled. “What?”
“The tunnels,” he said. “They’re moving. We’re not just lost. We’re being led.”
A growl built in my throat. “By who?”
Kael gave me a sharp look. “You already know.”
Of course. Of course, she wouldn’t just take Annika and let us follow her trail. She wanted to keep us here, wandering and desperate.
It was working.
I slammed my fist into the stone wall, sending cracks splintering through the rock. “Damn it!”
Losing Annika was one thing. Wasting time while she was out there, alone and undergoing God knows what torture, was unbearable.
Kael was watching me carefully. “Losing your head won’t help.”
I shot him a glare, my body still humming with the need to do something. Anything. “You don’t get it—”
“I do,” he cut in. “You think I don’t care? You think I don’t feel the same damn thing? But rage isn’t going to get her back.”
I turned away, my jaw locking. He wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t mean I could turn it off. The fury. The helplessness. The utter fear that I would never see her or Aiden again.
I swallowed it down. If this was a trap, there had to be a way out. If the cave was shifting, it was being controlled. And if it was being controlled…
“We need to break whatever spell is keeping it like this,” I said.
Kael nodded, already moving. “Then let’s find the source.”
We moved fast, keeping to the left every time the tunnel split. It was a gamble, but it was better than wandering in circles. The walls still felt like they were shifting, like something ancient was watching us, like it was amused by our struggle.
Suddenly, Kael stopped. He looked above him, then around. “We need to disrupt the flow of magic somehow.”
“You know how?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said, showing me his dagger. It still had blood on it. “Might not work, but it’s worth a shot.”
Without hesitation, he cut his palm, letting his blood drip onto the stone beneath us. His lips moved in a quiet incantation, words in a language older than either of us.
“Let’s hope that bitch didn’t count on you having a Nephilim by your side,” he grinned once the incantation was over. The effect wasn’t instant. We waited for what seemed to be a small eternity, when finally, the cave groaned. The walls trembled.
Then, ahead of us, a new path split open in the form of a crack in the stone, leading into darkness.
Kael exhaled. “That’s our way out.”
I didn’t hesitate. I surged forward, my instincts screaming that this was our chance. The tunnel was narrow and we were barely able to move, but that didn’t stop us. Not when we could sense something other than damp rock… fresh air.
“We’re close!” Kael shouted.
We pushed ahead, the ground sloping upward. The deeper we went, the colder the air became, until finally, there was light.
A sliver at first, then a break in the stone. I lunged for it, pushing through, and stumbled out onto damp earth, the scent of the forest hitting me like a slap to the face.
We were out.
I immediately turned to Kael. “You couldn’t have done that sooner? We could have been out half an hour ago!”
Every second wasted felt like another knife in my ribs.
Kael wiped the blood from his palm onto his shirt. “No. The spell was woven into the cave itself. If I’d tried before we found the weak point, it would’ve just shifted again and trapped us deeper.” He met my glare with calm patience, but there was steel beneath it. “I wasn’t about to risk getting us lost in that thing permanently.”
I exhaled through my nose, forcing myself to think instead of react. He was right. I hated it, but he was right.
“She has Annika.” The words felt like acid on my tongue. “Every second we were stuck in there—”
“I know.”
For the first time, I saw it in his face. The same frustration. The same barely-contained rage. He was just better at hiding it.
I ran a hand through my hair, trying to shake the lingering feeling of that damn cave pressing in on me. “Where do we go now?”
Kael glanced at the sky. “We need to track her. If the Shadow Bride wanted you to chase her, she’ll leave something behind.”
He was right. She wanted us to follow her. She wanted me to follow her.
The signs were subtle. Too subtle for a human, maybe even for a shifter. But not for me.
A trail of upturned leaves, a faint shimmer in the air where the wind bent unnaturally. The scent of something old and bitter, laced with the faintest trace of Annika.
It was enough.
“She’s leading us somewhere,” Kael muttered as he stared at the path ahead. “Could be a trap.”
“Of course it’s a trap.” I was already moving. “But it’s the only way to get her back.”
Kael didn’t argue. He fell in step beside me, silent as we wove through the trees. The weight of magic around us suffocated us with its presence, warning us that we were in mortal danger. The deeper we went, the worse it got.
The forest twisted around us, the trees stretching taller, the shadows growing thicker. The moonlight barely reached through the canopy, leaving everything cast in a dull, eerie glow.
Then I saw it.
A dark shape ahead, like smoke curled into the form of a doorway.
Kael tensed. “This isn’t just a path. It’s a passage.”
I didn’t move. This wasn’t just some game. This wasn’t some trick meant to test my patience. This was war.
The scent of shifters thickened, curling around us like smoke. There were too many. Dozens at least. More even. And beyond them, her.
A Nephilim was strong. Kael could hold his own, maybe even tear through them for a while. But me? A vampire who refused to unleash what made me truly dangerous? I was nothing more than a blade with a dull edge.
And that wasn’t enough. Not this time.
Kael must’ve sensed the shift in me. “Lucas.” His voice was careful. “You know what this means.”
I did. The beast inside me wasn’t something I let loose easily. It was raw and brutal. It had no mercy, no hesitation. It was pure instinct.
But Annika was out there, and I would burn this entire world down before I lost her.
I met Kael’s gaze, steady and sure. “Do it.”
His jaw tightened. “Once you start, you don’t know if—”
“I know.” My hands curled into fists, the hunger already scratching at the surface, begging to be set free. “I don’t care.”
A long pause. Then Kael exhaled sharply. “Alright.”
He stepped back, giving me space.
I closed my eyes, let the hunger seep into my bones, let the restraints I’d kept locked tight for years snap.
And then—
I let go.