Chapter 35
The tunnel swallowed all light the moment they stepped inside.
Kaldrek moved first, shoulders nearly brushing the dirt walls as he guided them deeper into the suffocating dark.
He forced his breathing to steady, though his chest felt too tight for air.
Alaric followed close behind him, one hand grazing the wall for balance, and Heidara brought up the rear.
Alaric did not possess their wolf-born night sight, and Kaldrek adjusted his pace accordingly, though every instinct screamed at him to run.
He hated these tunnels.
The last time he had traveled through one, he had nearly lost Evelyne.
He could still see her in his mind, trapped behind a fallen wall, bloodied, fighting off one of the horrors born from Vaelora’s magic.
They had peeled themselves from the walls like living rot.
Bat-shaped demons born of bloodroot corruption.
He remembered the terror of hearing her struggle against something unnatural, something that should not exist in this world.
The walls around him now bore the same signature.
Bloodroot veins ran through the dirt like diseased arteries, twisting across the tunnel floor and overhead, threaded so deeply into the land it was as though they had grown there.
Kaldrek could not still his thoughts. Every few steps he reached for the mate-bond on instinct, desperate for even the faintest spark of Evelyne.
Nothing steady answered him, only a thin, distant tremor of something wrong. He set his jaw and kept moving.
Then—
Immense pain.
It hit him like a blade sliding between his ribs.
He staggered half a step before catching himself against the wall. The sensation was sharp, burning, raw. Not his own.
Evelyne.
Relief and fury collided violently in his chest.
“She’s alive,” he rasped, voice thick with emotion he could not entirely suppress. “We’re close.”
He swallowed hard. Even saying it hurt. He could feel her pain like an echo in his own blood, and it nearly drove him to his knees.
Heidara’s voice cut through the tunnel behind him. “To the right. I hear something.”
Kaldrek didn’t stop. He pivoted toward the faint sound of distant growls and claws scraping against stone.
They ran.
The tunnel curved sharply, and they passed a small chamber on the left.
Kaldrek’s eyes swept it in a single glance—and then he froze.
A woman lay slumped against the wall, barely conscious, her body folded inward as though she no longer had the strength to hold herself upright.
A man stood close beside her, positioned between her and the corridor as if prepared to shield her from anything that might return.
The iron that had once bound her lay broken at her feet, twisted and discarded, but she was far too frail to stand on her own.
“Is it safe?” the man asked hoarsely as they approached. “The… the male. The wolf. He told me to stay with her until it was safe. Are they gone?”
“Who?” Kaldrek demanded.
“I don’t recall his name,” the man said, glancing nervously toward the shadows. “But he freed us. She… freed us. He’s leading—”
Alaric stopped so suddenly beside Kaldrek that his breath caught. “Holy hells,” he whispered. “Who is that?”
Then he stepped closer, crouched, and stared at her face.
“Aurelia?” His voice cracked.
At the sound of her name, the woman lifted her head weakly. Dirt and dried blood streaked her face, but her eyes widened with recognition.
“Oh, Alaric,” she whispered, and tears broke free.
Kaldrek’s pulse jumped. Evelyne’s sister. He saw the resemblance at once, even through the grime and what this place had done to her.
“You stay with her,” he ordered sharply. “We will return.”
Alaric nodded once, already on his knees beside her.
Heidara looked to Kaldrek. They needed no words. In the next breath, the shift took them, bones snapping and fur rolling into place as their wolves surged free. They hit the two Noskari rounding the bend before either creature had time for more than a startled hiss.
Kaldrek tore into the first, jaws crushing down and ripping away gray skin. Heidara shredded the second with ruthless efficiency. They did not slow.
They sprinted faster.
Hold on for me, love. I’m coming. We’re coming.
The snarls rose louder, unmistakable now, the sound of wolves fighting for their lives. Kaldrek burst into a wider chamber, and the sight before him nearly stopped his heart.
Evelyne lay crumpled on the ground.
Blood marked her fur. One leg was twisted at a sickening angle.
She was alive, he felt it through the bond, but only just. Around her, wolves he did not know battled beside Holden against a mass of Noskari.
Teeth and claws flashed through the dark.
Gray skin tore open. Black mist writhed violently through the chamber.
For one awful beat, Kaldrek stood frozen.
Then something inside him shattered loose.
His jaws locked around the nearest Noskari’s throat, and with one brutal twist, bone gave way.
Its head tore free in a violent spray of dark blood.
The taste hit him instantly, foul, corrupted, thick with rot, and it only fed the rage burning through him.
He would rip apart every creature that dared come near him. Near her.
He swept the chamber in a single glance. The unknown wolves were fighting beside Holden with ruthless precision, forcing the remaining Noskari back. They had the advantage.
Evelyne.
He went straight to her, lowering his head and pressing his snout gently to her cheek.
Her eyes fluttered open and found his.
You came for me.
Her voice in his mind was strained, and the sound of it nearly broke him.
Always.
The word carried everything he could not say aloud.
The fighting slowed. One by one, the Noskari fell or retreated. And the echoes of violence faded into heavy breathing. Wolves shifted back into human form without ceremony, no one bothering to cover themselves; survival had stripped away such concerns.
Kaldrek remained in his wolf form, unwilling to surrender the strength of it just yet.
He scanned the tunnel carefully, ensuring no lingering shadow waited to strike again. When he was certain the chamber was secure, he sent a signal to his second-in-command.
Holden came immediately, dropping beside Evelyne to guard her.
Only then did Kaldrek allow the shift to take him. When the fur receded, he rose to his feet.
“Kaldrek,” Holden said in an exhausted rasp, “I’m going back to the girl. We can’t leave her.”
“I know,” he said, turning to secure the tunnel beyond them.
They were not done yet. There were many bodies to burn.