Chapter 31
Darkness pressed in from every side. It was not merely the absence of light, but something heavier, a suffocating weight wrapped tight around her.
Cold had sunk deep into her bones and stayed there.
The air was damp and stale, thick with the metallic tang of blood and the rusted bite of iron.
Somewhere nearby, something groaned, low and wet and pained.
Evelyne knew her eyes were open, yet she saw nothing at all.
A hard, pounding ache beat behind her temples, matching the frantic rhythm of her heart. Her mouth felt flayed dry, her tongue sticking painfully to the roof of it. Weariness dragged at her limbs, tempting her to stop fighting and let herself fall back into unconsciousness.
But the cold would not allow it.
Evelyne shifted slightly and instinctively reached for the warmth of wool or leather. For the steady heat of Kaldrek beside her. But her hand met only grit.
Her breath snagged in her throat and she blinked into the dark, willing her wolf-sight to take hold, but nothing emerged. No outlines. No movement. Just endless black.
Where in the hell was she?
The last thing she remembered was running. Running toward her brother, toward the pack, and then… the wall of shadow. The teeth. The sickening pull as her blood was taken from her. Her stomach turned.
Oh gods.
She tried to move, and metal clanged in the dark.
Iron circled her ankles.
Chains.
She reached down, fingers brushing the links, and felt something hard threaded through them, something pulsing. She tore her hand away in revulsion just as the smell hit her.
Bloodroot.
No.
She kicked wildly, feet striking stone as the bindings rattled and scraped. The sound echoed too loudly in the confined space, exposing her.
“Holden!” she cried.
A wave of frantic whispers answered her.
“Shhh!”
“Quiet!”
“Stop!”
“Settle yourself,” an unfamiliar male voice hissed from somewhere ahead. “You’ll alert them.”
The fear woven into his tone was enough to silence her. But who was he talking about?
“I’m here,” Holden rasped softly from her right. “I’m right here, Evelyne.” His voice sounded raw and drained.
Kaldrek?
She reached desperately across the mate-bond.
Kaldrek!
The bond remained hollow. The warmth of him, the steady presence that always drew her back, had thinned to a frayed ache, as though something had gnawed at the thread between them.
Was he hurt? Was he here, somewhere in this dark?
Or worse.
She squeezed her eyes shut and dragged in a slow, shaking breath, fighting the hysteria rising in her throat. The air burned on the way down.
Something brushed her skin.
Evelyne jerked upright, alarm flashing through her, and the movement sent a fresh wave of cold crashing over her. That was when she realized she was naked. Of course. She must have shifted back. At least that explained the brutal chill working its way through her body.
A long, sharpened claw slid slowly along her cheek, and Evelyne gasped.
Hot, rotten breath rolled over her face, the stench so foul it left her swallowing against the urge to gag.
Her eyes strained against the black until, little by little, shapes began to form: elongated, skeletal figures wrapped in moving mist. The creature before her tilted its narrow head with disturbing curiosity, and its eyes were so dark she could almost see her own reflection staring back.
The realization hit her all at once. She scrambled backward, palms skidding through the dirt, only to slam into another body.
Evelyne cried out and recoiled, her heart hammering wildly.
She crawled in the opposite direction, reaching for the sound of Holden’s breathing.
Her sight had sharpened just enough to catch his outline in the dark.
He was naked like she was, iron fastened around his ankles, seated back to back with another male while bloodroot-threaded chains stretched from them into the cavern floor.
The Noskari’s cruel laughter slithered through the dark.
It did not move toward her. Instead, its shape seemed to peel and ripple, as though it were savoring her fear. The black mist cloaking its skeletal frame swelled and thinned in a grotesque, pulsing rhythm.
“Such good blood,” it hissed, its long tongue sliding over a row of narrow, glistening teeth. “We will share it… though I may keep you for myself.”
Her stomach lurched hard. Then again. The stench of its breath hit her full in the face, and bile rushed into her mouth before she could stop it.
She doubled over as vomit spilled onto the dirt between her hands, leaving her throat burning.
When it passed, she stayed folded there, trembling, emptied out and even more parched than before.
Holden reached for her in the dark, his hand finding the center of her back. He rubbed slow circles between her shoulders, as if trying to ground her. But nothing could steady her now. She only needed to know where Kaldrek was. Where she—
The air grew heavier with every breath.
They were underground.
Evelyne forced herself to lift her head and blink into the dark until her eyes adjusted enough to see. The walls were not stone, but packed earth threaded through with thick, vein-like tendrils. The sight of them was enough to confirm it. A tunnel. Again.
A tremor ran through her, then another, until her whole body shook. The dirt walls felt closer now, crushingly close, and she turned her head, trying to make sense of the shapes chained along the ground.
One.
Two.
Three—
There were at least seven others. Seven bodies besides her and Holden.
Some slumped where they sat. Others remained upright, though all of them were chained.
Evelyne stared at them through the dark as dread crawled deeper into her chest. Who were they?
How long had they been trapped here, wasting away beneath the land?
The Noskari meant to feed on them. On all of them.
Was this how they gathered their strength—hoarding bodies underground like livestock, draining them slowly while they hid and built power beneath the surface?
The thought made a sick kind of sense. And when the creature spoke again, she knew at once it was the same one that had pierced her wrist near the trading post, the same one that had nearly drained her dry.
“I’ll be back for this one,” it said before slipping away.
That explained the pounding in her skull, the weakness in her limbs, the hollow ache beneath her ribs. When the last trace of it was gone, Evelyne was left there with Holden and the other prisoners, all of them, so far as she could tell, human.
“Take a breath,” Holden murmured beside her. “Steady yourself. You need to think clearly.”
She instinctively crossed her arms over her chest, covering her exposed breasts. The darkness concealed most of her, but she knew his wolf-sight allowed him to see more clearly than she could. His gaze, however, never wavered from her face.
She obeyed him. Because she could feel herself unraveling. Her thoughts were splintering and panic clawed at her composure. If she lost control now, they were both dead.
She had survived a tunnel like this before.
She had faced bloodroot veins and creatures born of blood magic.
She had fought them. Killed them.
She could do it again.
Evelyne closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. Inhale. Slow. Controlled. Exhale.
She imagined warm grass beneath her feet. Sunlight on her skin. Kaldrek standing behind her, correcting her stance during training. His large, steady hands adjusting her wrist, guiding her shoulders back into place. Grounding her.
“Good,” Holden said quietly. “Now look at me.”
She turned toward him.
“As far as I know,” he continued, his voice low, “it’s only you and me from our pack down here. I don’t know what became of the others. I only remember being dragged. But we’re underground. Another one of their tunnels, most likely. That explains the smell. And why they’re nesting here.”
He dragged both hands down his face and let out a rough breath.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“How long have you been down here?” Evelyne called softly to the others in the dark.
For several seconds, only breathing answered her. Then a woman’s voice emerged, thin and exhausted.
“Two days,” she whispered. “They feed on others held deeper in the tunnels. We hear them.” A pause. “The screaming.”
“Only one of them ever gets brought back,” a male voice said from across the tunnel.
Evelyne turned toward the sound.
He lifted his chin slightly, nodding toward a small shape curled along the dirt wall. “And she was here before any of us.”
Evelyne hadn’t noticed her before. The girl was barely more than a shadow against the ground.
Frail, filthy, and draped in what had once been a dress, now torn and hanging from her thin frame in ragged strips.
Her shoulders were exposed, sleeves ripped away entirely.
Hair fell in tangled knots over her face, masking her expression.
She trembled in a tight curl, the kind of ceaseless shudder that belonged to a body long stripped of warmth.
“What happens to the others?” Holden asked quietly. He sounded disturbed.
“They drain them,” the woman answered, voice hollow. “Until there’s nothing left.”
Silence settled over the tunnel.
“Why bring her back?” Evelyne asked, barely more than a breath. “Why not just finish it?”
The man across from them gave a small, bitter shrug. “She’s their favorite.”
The word felt wrong in this place.
“Though it sounds like one of them may have found a new one.”
Evelyne despised the thought of being savored. Of being kept. Her blood, her body, was not theirs to feed from or share. She swallowed hard.
“Don’t worry,” Holden said firmly beside her. “We’re getting out of here.” His voice carried steel now. “I’m bringing my alpha his mate back.”
Evelyne looked again toward the girl in the corner, perhaps a young woman, though it was difficult to tell.
Only then did she notice how apart she was from the others.
Evelyne could feel the rest of them, hear their breathing, sense their nearness even in the dark.
But the girl felt separate. Set off from everyone else. No one touched her. No one sat close.
Just as Evelyne realized she had been looking too long, the girl slowly turned over.
Her back was to them now, her shoulders folding inward in quiet retreat.
Something tightened painfully in Evelyne’s chest. Whatever had happened to her in this tunnel had done more than frighten her. It had hollowed her out.
“Take this,” a male voice muttered nearby.
A bundled shape landed in her lap. She unfolded it to find a large, filthy shirt. It stank of sweat, but she pulled it over her head without hesitation. The fabric hung loosely on her frame, yet it shielded her skin from the cold.
“Thank you.”
Holden did not bother asking for anything. He had spent half his life running feral beneath open skies. Modesty meant little to him now.
Evelyne forced her attention downward and bent to study the iron fastened around her ankles.
The chain ran several feet before cinching around something thick and solid driven deep into the ground, something that felt almost like wood.
She seized the links and pulled with all her strength.
At once, the veins threaded through the metal drew tight.
It did not shift.
Several others were bound to the same anchor point. Their chains overlapped and clanked together when she tested it again.
“Perhaps,” she said through clenched teeth, “if we all pull at once—”
“We’ve tried,” a middle-aged woman interrupted gently from the darkness. “It won’t move.”
Evelyne turned toward her. In the dimness, the prisoners all looked alike—dirty, exhausted, but largely uninjured. All except the young woman curled against the wall.
“Well, there are more of us now,” Evelyne said firmly. “More weight. More strength. Or would you rather wait here for them to finish us one by one?”
Silence stretched.
Then, heads nodded.
“On three,” Holden murmured. “One, two, three—”
They pulled.
Chains screeched against wood and rocks. Metal rang sharply in the confined space, louder than Evelyne had expected.
Too loud. Enough for the sound to carry.
From deeper within the tunnel came a ripple of movement, followed by a layered hiss and wicked laughter.
Three shadows gathered and slid toward them, their elongated forms barely contained within the writhing mist. Black eyes flickered open within the darkness, their jaws slowly revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth.
But they did not approach the other prisoners or Evelyne. Instead, they moved toward the girl.
“No,” someone whispered. “Not again.”
The creatures surrounded her, their shadows stretching long across the floor. One crouched low. Another tilted its narrow head as if listening to her heartbeat.
And then they all sank their teeth into her flesh and fed.
The girl’s jagged scream ripped through the tunnel, tearing at the confined air. It echoed off the walls before being abruptly smothered. In its place came the grotesque sound of feeding, causing another round of nausea to roll through Evelyne.
The scent of copper and rot intensified.
Evelyne turned her head and retched again, a sour burn climbing her throat as her body convulsed. She squeezed her eyes shut, but it did nothing to block out the sound.
Beside her, Holden squirmed. The chains scraped as his muscles tensed, and a low, furious growl vibrated in his chest. Not loud enough to draw attention, but full of barely restrained violence.
Around them, the other prisoners whimpered and wept under their breath.
The whole scene, even in darkness, was repulsive, and they could do nothing to help the girl.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ended.
The Noskari peeled back from her.
It had lasted only moments. Not long enough to kill.
Just long enough to remind the others of what they could do.
The girl sagged against the wall, trembling, but still breathing. How she remained alive in that condition, Evelyne could not fathom. She also could not peel her eyes away from the dark stains matted in the girl’s hair, crusted along her torn dress, smeared across her shoulders—
It was not dirt.
It was blood.
Layer upon layer of it.