20. Chapter 20 - Matt
Matt woke three hours later to someone pounding on the door like they were executing a search warrant.
He groaned into the pillow. Every muscle in his body protested the movement, and the bruises from the collapse beneath the mountain had stiffened overnight into one solid wall of pain.
Beside him, Theron opened one eye.
Matt froze for exactly half a second because the sight still hit him like a truck.
Theron lay curled partly against him beneath the tangled sheets, dark hair falling across his forehead and one hand still resting loosely against Matt’s ribs, as if some part of him needed physical confirmation that Matt remained there.
The bond carried the immediate warmth of Theron’s awareness.
Then another knock rattled the door.
“Matthew,” Vale’s voice called from outside. “If you are dead, I am going to be extremely irritated.”
Matt buried his face deeper into the pillow. “Go away.”
“No.”
Theron’s mouth twitched beside him. “I begin to understand why you find her exhausting.”
Matt looked over at him. “You say that now. Give it a week and you’ll realize she’s basically an extremely violent school principal.”
“I do not understand what a principal is.”
“You’re honestly better off.”
Another knock. “Debrief,” Vale called. “Now.”
Matt groaned again before forcing himself upright. The movement reminded him he had, in fact, been crushed by approximately half a mountain less than twelve hours ago.
Theron sat up more carefully beside him, though Matt could still feel the lingering soreness pulling through the bond between them. Sunlight filtered weakly through the windows now, turning the room pale gold around them.
For a moment neither of them moved. The quiet felt different this morning, no longer fragile but finally real.
Matt looked over just in time to catch Theron studying the room again with the same cautious curiosity he’d shown the night before.
Theron noticed. “You are staring again.”
Matt snorted softly. “Can you blame me?”
A faint flush touched the older wolf’s throat before he looked away toward the window instead.
Matt smiled despite himself. Theron embarrassed was apparently a thing now.
The bond carried Theron’s suspicion a second later. “Do not start.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely starting.”
Theron narrowed his eyes. “You are insufferable.”
“And yet,” Matt said while pushing himself painfully out of bed, “you seem weirdly into me anyway.”
The warmth that moved sharply through the bond afterward answered before Theron could.
Matt grinned. “Wow. Okay. That’s useful information.”
Theron looked genuinely offended now. “I regret surviving the mountain.”
“That’s fair.”
***
The conference room felt too bright after the mountain.
Matt sat slouched in one of the reinforced chairs near the far end of the table while a medic wrapped fresh gauze around the cuts crossing his forearm.
Across from him, Vale stood beside one of the wall monitors with a tablet in her hand while several Valker operatives organized reports and recovery data from the collapse site.
Theron remained near the back wall beside the windows.
He was not hiding, but he clearly had not decided what to do with himself in a room full of people yet either.
Even exhausted, he carried stillness differently than everyone around him.
Most wolves burned through adrenaline with restless movement or forced conversation.
Theron simply watched the room with the quiet awareness that had kept him alive beneath the mountain for centuries.
And the room noticed him.
Matt caught operatives glancing toward Theron every few seconds before quickly pretending they had not. Hard not to stare at the ancient wolf who had walked out of a buried supernatural prison looking vaguely irritated by fluorescent lighting.
Vale finally looked up from her tablet. “Alright. Let’s try this again now that everyone has consumed caffeine and stopped actively bleeding.”
“One of those problems remains unresolved,” Matt muttered.
“You’re conscious enough to complain, so medically you’re fine.”
“That feels inaccurate.”
“It usually is,” one of the medics replied without looking up.
Matt sighed dramatically while the medic tightened the bandage around his arm hard enough to make him wince.
Theron noticed and concern brushed sharply through the bond before he pushed away from the wall and crossed the room in complete silence. Several operatives shifted aside automatically to make room for him without seeming fully aware they were doing it.
Theron stopped beside Matt’s chair. “You are injured.”
“Technically.”
The medic snorted softly. “He lost a fight with a collapsing mountain.”
“I won,” Matt corrected.
“Debatable.”
Theron’s eyes narrowed as he studied the bruising along Matt’s throat and jaw. The concern moving through the bond no longer carried panic beneath it, but it still tightened every time Matt moved wrong or breathed too sharply.
Matt reached over and brushed his fingers lightly against Theron’s wrist beneath the table. “I’m okay.”
The reassurance carried clearly through the bond, and Theron relaxed beside him.
Vale noticed that too, though she wisely chose not to comment on it. Instead she tapped the monitor behind her, bringing up satellite scans of the destroyed monastery and the collapsed mountain beneath it.
“The collapse sealed the lower chambers completely,” she said. “Satellite imaging confirms the fracture stabilized approximately four hours after detonation. Thermal scans show no surviving voids beneath the throne chamber.”
One of the operatives near the far side of the room took a step forward. “So there’s nothing left down there?”
“Nothing accessible,” Vale corrected.
“The King is gone,” Baptiste added from near the windows.
A final silence settled across the room, too solemn for celebration.
Another operative glanced toward Theron carefully. “Was the seal always supposed to fail if he died?”
Theron’s attention shifted toward the monitor displaying the collapsed mountain. “The throne chamber existed long before it became a prison,” he said softly. “The First King built it as a place of power. A throne. A source of control tied directly to the oldest bloodlines.”
Several uneasy looks passed around the room.
“By the time the corruption spread beyond his control,” Theron continued, “the wolves serving beneath him realized the chamber itself had become part of the problem. They turned the seal against him and bound him inside the very power he created.”
“The corruption,” Vale said carefully. “That started with him?”
Theron nodded once. “The throne chamber amplified it across connected bloodlines for centuries. Aggression. Instability. Obsession with dominance. Some wolves resisted it better than others, but none of them escaped it completely.”
One of the younger wolves looked unsettled. “You’re saying all of that came from him?”
“In part,” Theron answered. “Not every cruelty belongs to magic. But the mountain strengthened the worst instincts inside wolves tied to those bloodlines. Fear became paranoia. Pride became violence. Hunger for control became obsession.”
Silence settled briefly after that.
Then Baptiste spoke from near the windows. “And now?”
Theron looked back toward the monitor again, toward the image of the shattered mountain burying the throne chamber beneath thousands of tons of stone.
“Now the seal is gone,” he said. “And whatever remained of that influence died with him beneath the collapse.”
Relief moved subtly through the room in quieter breathing and loosening shoulders. The realization that something ancient had finally ended.
Matt leaned back carefully once the medic finally released his arm. “So officially speaking, how bad were my decisions down there?”
Vale stared at him flatly. “Historically catastrophic.”
“Okay, but hypothetically?”
“You turned a controlled extraction into a suicide mission because apparently self-preservation is optional for you.”
Matt considered that seriously for a second. “In fairness, I was emotionally compromised.”
“You were absolutely compromised.”
Theron spoke before Vale could continue. “He returned because of me.”
The room quieted.
Matt looked up at him. “Theron—”
“It is true.”
“No,” Matt said firmly. “I went back because leaving you there was never an option.”
Warmth moved through the bond after that. Theron held his gaze for a long moment before something softer briefly crossed his expression.
One of the younger operatives near the far side of the room cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sir… what exactly are we supposed to call him?”
Matt shifted his weight. “Uh.”
The operative looked increasingly uncomfortable beneath the attention suddenly shifting toward him. “I just mean for reports and documentation. We don’t exactly have protocol for…” He gestured vaguely toward Theron. “This.”
“That is possibly the rudest way anyone has ever referred to me,” Theron observed dryly.
A few startled laughs broke around the room. Even Matt nearly choked on his coffee.
The younger operative flushed. “That is not what I meant.”
“I know.”
The poor guy somehow looked even more nervous afterward.
Vale pinched the bridge of her nose briefly. “Guardian was a designation, not an identity. Nobody knew who, or what, was down here.”
Theron went very still beside Matt’s chair. Matt felt a subtle shift move through the bond, too subdued to be anger.
The younger operative straightened. “Right. Sorry. Guardian—”
“Theron is sufficient,” he said quietly.
The room fell silent for half a heartbeat.
Then the operative nodded once. “Understood.”
Something subtle shifted afterward, and Matt felt it move through the room.
The title had carried distance with it. Mystery. Fear. Legend. But hearing Theron correct it himself changed something important. He stopped sounding like an artifact pulled out of some classified archive and started sounding like an actual person standing in front of them.