Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Dean
Iwas hanging at the back of the group, keeping one eye on my pack and one eye on the shadows that pressed in from all sides.
The wolf was so close to the surface that I couldn’t separate myself from him anymore.
Every sense was heightened to a painful degree.
I could hear the heartbeats of my packmates, smell their fear and determination and the sharp copper tang of adrenaline.
I could feel the vibration of footsteps on the forest floor, could track the subtle shifts in air pressure that told me something was moving in the trees around us.
I could hear them.
The things in the shadows. The fae hounds that had been stalking us for hours.
They weren’t even trying to be quiet anymore.
I could hear the soft pad of paws on leaves, the whisper of breath, the occasional low growl that was quickly silenced by a sharper sound from somewhere else in the pack.
They were communicating. Coordinating. Surrounding us from all sides, tightening the circle with every passing minute.
There was no chance of reaching the Fifth Court without fighting our way there.
I’d known that for the last hour, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it.
The fae hounds were too many, too patient, too determined.
They weren’t going to let us slip through their net.
And I’d only just realised what about this situation felt so wrong.
Because the fae hounds weren’t stalking us, they were herding us somewhere deeper into the forest. And now there was something else out there too.
Something that made the fae hounds seem almost friendly by comparison.
But the others were right. We needed to get closer to safety before we could risk the fight.
Every step forward was a step closer to the court, a step closer to walls that could protect us, to power that could turn the tide.
If we could just hold out a little longer, just make it a little further. ..
When it’s time, the wolf reminded me, impatient and eager, I want blood.
You’ll get it, I promised. When it’s time, you’ll get everything you want. But not yet. Not until we’re closer.
The wolf subsided, but I could feel him pacing in the back of my mind, counting the seconds until he could be unleashed.
Maddox started to drop back toward me. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes kept flicking to the trees. He was probably coming to compare notes, to make sure we were on the same page about what was stalking us. His lion would be on edge the same as my wolf.
He never made it.
The ground beneath our feet shuddered. Not an earthquake, but something else. Something intentional. A pulse of power that rippled through the earth and made the trees groan overhead.
And then the fog came.
It rolled in from all directions at once, thick and white and impenetrable. Within seconds, I couldn’t see more than three feet in front of my face. The shapes of my packmates dissolved into grey silhouettes and then vanished entirely, swallowed by the unnatural mist.
I heard Alyssa shout something. Heard Tank’s growl cut off mid-sound. Heard Ryder curse and Maddox call out my name.
And then I heard the voice.
It came from above, from the trees, from everywhere and nowhere at once. A whisper that slithered into my ears and coiled around my spine.
“Run, little wolf. We much prefer it when we can taste the fear in your blood.”
I drew my sword in one smooth motion, the steel ringing as it cleared the scabbard. The wolf was frantic inside me, howling for me to shift, to become something that could fight properly in this blindness. But I forced him back, forced him to focus.
Shut up, I snarled at him. Shifting won’t help if we can’t find our pack. Focus on where they are. Use your senses. Find them.
The wolf subsided, still growling but obedient.
I closed my eyes, which were useless in this fog anyway, and let my other senses take over.
The bond pulsed at the edges of my awareness, five threads of connection stretching out into the mist. They were there.
All of them. Scattered, separated, but alive.
Then I opened my eyes just in time to see the thing drop from the trees.
It landed in front of me with a sound like bones cracking, and for a moment, my mind refused to process what I was seeing.
It looked like a woman, or at least, something that could once have been human until it turned into something so much worse.
Human arms, human torso, a face that was twisted it into an expression of permanent, hungry malice.
From the waist down, the body of a spider.
Eight massive, jointed limbs that clicked against the forest floor as it moved.
Spinnerets that dripped something wet and glistening.
But it was the eyes that I couldn’t look away from.
Too many eyes, clustered at the temples where human eyes should have been.
An anastid.
The fog pressed close around us, cutting off any hope of seeing my pack. I was alone with this thing, separated from everyone I loved by magic and malice. The wolf howled in my mind, desperate to find the others, but I forced him to focus on the threat in front of me.
“Silly little wolf,” the anastid purred, her voice like honey laced with poison.
She began to circle me, her spider legs clicking against the now frozen leaves with a sound that set my teeth on edge.
“We came all the way from where the gods ripped open the mountains to create us a home, just to taste the blood of the shifters that dared to cross our master.”
I adjusted my grip on my sword, keeping the blade between us, tracking her movements as she circled.
She was fast. I could see it in the way she moved, the casual grace of a predator who had never known what it was to be prey.
But she was also arrogant. Talking when she should have been fighting.
Savoring the moment when she should have been going for the kill.
“Did you spin your own puppet strings, spider? Or did Arik grant you those as well?” I kept my voice steady, buying time, listening for any hint of where my pack might be. “You mean nothing to him. You’re nothing but a weapon to wield. A tool to be used and discarded.”
The anastid’s smile widened, revealing teeth that were too sharp, too numerous. Row after row of them, disappearing back into the darkness of her throat. “You make that sound like something we wouldn’t enjoy.”
She tipped her head back and laughed, and it was a horrible sound.
High and chittering and wrong in ways I couldn’t articulate.
The kind of laugh that would haunt my nightmares if I survived long enough to have them.
The fog seemed to thicken around us as she laughed, pressing closer, cutting off even more of my vision.
Then her head tipped to the side with a cracking sound, the angle unnatural, her many eyes focusing on something behind me.
“Arik will remake the realm,” she continued, her voice shifting into something almost reverent.
Almost worshipful. “And when he brings about an age of darkness, the true creatures of Nymeria will take our rightful places. No longer hiding in the depths, no longer cowering from the light, no longer bound by the laws of a weakening goddess. We will hunt freely, feast freely, kill freely. The world will be our hunting ground, and there will be no one left to stop us.”
I wasn’t listening anymore.
Because I could hear it. The second set of legs, clicking softly against the forest floor behind me.
The subtle displacement of air as something large and multi-limbed crept closer while its companion kept me distracted.
They thought I was just a wolf. Just a shifter.
Just prey to be toyed with before the kill.
They were wrong.
I spun.
My sword drove deep into the anastid that had been creeping up behind me, the blade punching through her torso with a wet, tearing sound. She screamed, a high-pitched shriek that seemed to vibrate through my skull, and the one I’d been facing screamed too, a mirror of her sister’s pain.
I ripped the sword free, ducking as the first anastid lunged for me.
Her claws raked through the air where my head had been, close enough that I felt the wind of their passage.
She crashed into her dying sister instead, her claws tearing through the already-wounded flesh in a frenzy of misdirected violence.
I rolled, coming up in a crouch, and swung my sword in a wide arc. The blade caught the uninjured anastid across her spider legs, cleaving through two of them in a single stroke. She fell, shrieking, her remaining legs scrabbling for purchase on the blood-slicked forest floor.
I backed up two steps, sword raised, eyes scanning the fog.
The screams echoing around me weren’t just coming from the two anastids I’d fought. They were coming from everywhere. The trees, the shadows, the fog itself. Dozens of voices raised in fury and hunger.
It wasn’t just the two of them. The forest was full of them.
The wolf howled inside me, eager for the fight, but I held him back.
As much as I wanted to shift, as much as every instinct screamed at me to become something with claws and fangs and the raw power to tear these creatures apart, I knew it would be a mistake.
We didn’t know what poison these things might carry, what venom might lurk in their claws or their bite.
The sword was the safer option. The sword kept distance between me and them.
I had a moment of grim satisfaction. At least I had the anastids occupied.
At least while they were focused on me, they weren’t hunting my pack.
Somewhere out there in the fog, Alyssa and the others were fighting their own battles, facing their own nightmares.
I could feel them through the bonds, distant but alive, and that was all that mattered.