Chapter 10
The ledge was barely a couple of feet across, but Zeke’s gaze locked on a narrow opening in the cliff face. A cave, dark and defensible. Perfect.
The entrance was tight, forcing him to duck as he turned and pushed Michelle inside. Dry stone stretched back into darkness, wide enough for them to lie side by side if needed. But the opening itself was only wide enough for his body to block completely.
“Stay back,” he growled, the words coming out deeper than usual. His voice sounded wrong even to his own ears, layered with something that hadn’t been there before.
Her hand touched his shoulder. “Zeke, what’s wrong?”
He couldn’t answer. The legion ignited in his blood, a liquid fire flooding every cell with power he’d never felt before.
His muscles expanded, bones shifting as his body grew larger, more massive than it had ever been.
His bones cracked and lengthened, joints popping in ways that should’ve hurt like hell but didn’t.
Heat blazed through him instead, rebuilding him from the inside.
His pulse hammered so hard his vision pulsed with it. Don’t think about it. He locked his jaw until his teeth ached, using the pain to anchor himself. This state, this terrible power… it was the only thing that would keep her alive.
His hands were bloody where they’d scraped against the rocky ledge on the way up here.
As he watched, unable to look away, a black substance flowed from beneath his skin.
It pooled then hardened instantly into a dark shell, covering his hands and spreading up his forearms to his elbows.
The same protection formed on his feet, creeping up to his knees to cover where the rocks had bitten deep.
The world exploded into sensation. Not just sight and sound anymore, but a flood that threatened to overwhelm him.
Every heartbeat in the forest below registered in his awareness.
Seven ferals at the cliff base, their fury was a bitter taste on his tongue.
Three more were circling wide, looking for another route up.
Small animals cowering in their burrows, their terror a high-pitched whine he felt in his bones.
The rock beneath him pulsed with its own strange energy, old and waiting.
Too much. His brain couldn’t process it all, the flow of information threatening to overwhelm him. He forced himself to categorize, to sort threats from non-threats even as his awareness catalogued every beetle, every bird, every drop of moisture in the air.
“Zeke?” Michelle’s voice came from behind him, soft and worried. “Your eyes… they’re burning. Like coals in a fire.”
He knew he should respond, should reassure her, but the words wouldn’t come.
His throat could only produce growls now.
When she placed her hand on his arm again, trying to ground him, he shrugged it off.
Every nerve screamed with focus on the forest below.
Gods, I want her touch, a part of him cried, but the legion ignored it.
Movement below. Two ferals tested the cliff face again, their claws scraping against stone.
The sound triggered something primal in him, and a growl erupted from his chest. Not an izaean sound at all, but something that shook the very rock beneath him, promising death to anything that dared approach.
The ferals below froze. Through his awareness, he felt their recognition… not of him as Zeke, but of him as something more dangerous than they were. They backed away from the cliff, their movements careful and submissive.
“That’s good,” Michelle whispered from the cave. “You’re scaring them off. You’re protecting us.”
The wind shifted… northwest, carrying pine resin and old snow. The temperature had dropped three degrees. Michelle’s voice registered at sixty-two decibels. His mind sorted each input into neat categories while the meaning of her actual words just... went.
Gone. Nothing.
The ferals didn’t leave entirely. They established a perimeter at the forest edge, close enough to watch but far enough to avoid provoking him.
Waiting for him to tire and to let his guard down.
They had no idea he felt every breath they took, every shift of weight, every hungry glance up at the cave.
The sun crawled across the sky, marking hours in the shifting shadows below. His shoulders burned from holding his position, but he refused to move. His massive body filled the cave entrance completely, a wall of flesh and armor between Michelle and the world.
Below, the ferals had given up pacing. Now they squatted in the shadows, waiting.
His hands trembled against the stone, just once, just for a second, before the legion’s ice flooded back through his veins. No. If he let himself think about what he’d become, if he looked at the black shell coating his arms, the way his body had swollen beyond normal proportions—
No.
Michelle tried several more times to reach him.
Her voice was a constant gentle murmur, talking about anything and everything.
The weather. The cave’s geology. Stories about her children when they were young.
Each word brushed against his consciousness, warm fingers trying to find purchase on ice.
He wanted to turn to her, to tell her he could hear her, but his body refused to obey.
The legion had control now, and it cared about only one thing… keeping threats at bay.
Great. Just draanthing great. The thought bubbled up from somewhere deep, a flash of his old self. Turned into a goddamn statue while the female I—
But the legion crushed the thought before it could finish.
As the afternoon stretched toward evening, his awareness picked up new movement.
Not ferals this time, but something else.
A pack of krevasta moving through the underbrush, their strange spider-like bodies navigating the forest floor.
They weren’t heading toward the cave, but their presence sent ripples through the feral perimeter.
The red-eyed predators below shifted nervously, some backing further from the cliff.
The Krevasta were also infected by the legion. He felt it in them, a distant echo of what raged through his own blood. But where his legion screamed for violence, theirs hummed with a different purpose.
The sky went orange, then purple, then that deep gray that meant night was coming fast. The temperature dropped another degree and behind him, Michelle shifted, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth.
She'd given up talking to him maybe an hour ago.
There were no more stories about her kids, no more random observations about the cave walls.
But she hadn't moved away. Hadn't gone deeper into the cave where it might be warmer.
She just sat there, close enough that he felt the heat from her body against his back.
Then she began to sing.
Not words, just a wordless melody that started soft and built slowly. The tune was nothing he recognized, something sad and sweet that drifted through the air. It shouldn’t have mattered. It was just another sound among thousands, no more significant than wind through leaves.
But it wasn’t just sound.
It reached something deep inside him. Not the legion, but something else. Something that was still him. The part that remembered her skin against his. Her laughter. The trust in her eyes as he’d carried her up the cliff.
His body had swelled to impossible proportions, black armor covering his limbs like something from a nightmare. He knew he could kill anything that approached without effort, or could track every living thing for miles around.
But he couldn’t turn to look at the female he loved. Couldn’t speak her name. Couldn’t tell her he was still in here, buried but aware.
Her singing continued, the melody repetitive and soothing. She pressed closer to him, her small body warm against his transformed back. Her arms came around him from behind, barely able to span his expanded chest, but holding on anyway.
“Come back to me,” she whispered. “I know you’re in there. I’m not afraid of you, Zeke. Come back.”
The ferals below hadn’t left. He tracked them settling in for a long wait, building rough shelters against the night cold. They would be there come morning, ready to try again. If he let go of this power, would he be able to protect her when they attacked?
Her arms tightened around him, and she sang louder. The melody pushed through all the noise in his head, giving him something to grab onto. Something real. Something that wasn't ferals or heartbeats or the temperature dropping.
Just her voice. Just Michelle.
The legion fought back, screaming warnings about the threats below. Seven ferals. Maybe more by now. Let go of the power and they'd climb. They'd take her. Kill her.
But for the first time since this thing had taken over his body, Zeke realized he could choose. The legion wasn't in complete control anymore. Michelle's voice, her arms around him… she'd cracked something open.
Stay like this and keep her safe.
Or come back to her and hope he was enough.
Michelle's arms stayed locked around Zeke's massive frame as the deep rumble in his chest changed.
The mindless growl of a predator softened, the vibration shifting into something that rolled through his body like a faraway storm, matching the beat of her heart pressed against his back.
She felt the moment he made the choice to pull back from the edge.
Muscles that had been rigid for hours loosened under her touch.
He turned his head, just enough for her to see the glow of his eyes.
Not the burning red of a feral but a deep, luminous yellow that fixed on her with an intensity that made heat pool low in her belly.
Her body answered his focused attention with a thrum of awareness that had nothing to do with the day's terror.