9 Reed
The shattered black shale tore at our knees. The river of poison laughed at us with every boiling wave.
We had failed twice already. First, when I tried to paint the grass and honeysuckle over the ruin, only for the toxic tide to rot it to slime. Second, when I threw brute-force magma out over the chasm, only for the caustic spray to shatter the obsidian into shrapnel and blast me onto my back.
Avaline was right. You couldn’t bully an astral wound.
“Stop guessing,” Avaline said, her voice cutting through the foul hiss of the canyon.
She dropped to her knees beside me at the lip of the drop, her astral dress dark with shale dust, her cold hand closing over the trembling heat of my right wrist.
“You are trying to command the canyon like a mortal blaze, Reed. But this is the Goddess’s Loom, and the river below us is alchemical poison poured into the spirit-realm.
It eats raw power. You cannot out-burn it—you have to weave with it.
You have to match the resonance of your Founding fire to the silver thread of my dormant soul. ”
I looked down at her, the sheer proximity of her in the Dreamscape setting my blood ablaze.
Even here, her gaze swept across my bare chest, tracing the thick curve of my shoulders, the corded muscle along my ribs, and the tight, sweat-slick ridges of my abs flexed with strain.
The awareness between us was electric—a starving, heavy sexual pull that neither of us could hide.
“Guide the flame,” I gritted out, my voice thick as my obsidian wolf paced behind us, his hackles bristling against the bruised sky. “Tell me how to shape it.”
“Call upon the bedrock,” she whispered, her breath warm against my neck as her fingers slid down my forearm, her palm settling over the back of my hand.
Her unblinking dark eyes fixed on the far bank where her white wolf paced in silence.
“Slow the current of your blood. Do not strike like a hammer. Let the magma rise like an ancient root through the stone, wrapping itself in the silver warp of the Loom.”
I nodded. I set my bare palms flat against the black shale, and this time I reached deep into the sacred, primordial well of my Founding lineage—the subterranean fire that had flowed through my ancestors before the six bloodlines ever signed a Compact in blood.
Yet even as the heat gathered in my marrow, the bitter truth of my bloodline weighed heavy on my chest.
Wolf magic was never meant to be wielded alone.
Across the entire history of our packs, the true, invincible potency of an Alpha’s elemental bloodline only fully awakened after the sacred mating bond was sealed in the physical realm.
When Brann claimed Wren, when Santos anchored Nell, when Levi, Finn, and Tommy held their mates through the fever—it was the physical act of claiming, the seed and the shared climax, that unlocked the Goddess’ seal on the magic.
I was fighting with an unanchored soul. Because consummating our bond in the real world would detonate the Frost-Lock in Avaline’s marrow and execute her on the spot, I remained crippled.
Still, for her, I gave every drop I had.
Magma bled up through the shale. Slow. Luminous.
A river of molten obsidian glowing with ancient gold veins, rising like living root-wood from the bedrock.
Avaline’s soul leaned into mine, singing against my pulse, weaving the golden threads of her spirit into the glowing glass, shaping it into a sleek, arched span that reached out over the boiling white depths.
The river spray hit it. The pearl-white poison lashed against the prow of the magical span.
The obsidian held.
“Again,” she whispered, her breathing ragged, her cheek brushing my shoulder as our souls intertwined in the Dreamscape. “Keep the thread unbroken. Extend the span.”
We pushed. Foot by agonizing foot, we wove the black glass into the teeth of the poison, bridging the gulf between her human consciousness and her stranded beast. But channeling unanchored Founding magic across two planes at once tore at the seams of my spirit, the psychic strain pulling violently at the silver tether that anchored me to the waking world.
The void wavered—
And the heat snapped me back into my body.
I opened my eyes in the dim amber lamplight of the bedroom. The silence of the Dreamscape ripped away, replaced by the damp press of cotton sheets, the smell of elder-ash, and the steady, metallic ticking of the heater.
My skin was slick and fever-hot against Avaline’s naked, freezing frame. The heat of my furnace was melting the surface frost on her skin, leaving her bare flesh glistening wet in the lamplight.
Against my chest, her paralyzed body whimpered—a soft, broken moan tearing from her blue lips in the waking world as her mind fought in the astral depths of the Dreamscape.
Her hips twitched in an involuntary, desperate spasm, grinding her soft pelvis back against my thighs, her Heat musk—honeysuckle, and raw female arousal—flooding my senses like an intoxicating narcotic.
My cock surged against her lower spine, so hard it felt bruised against the mattress.
The physical hunger was a roaring fire in my throat.
My muscled arms burned with the feral urge to cup the full weight of her breasts, to roll her onto her back and suckle her hardened nipples.
Every instinct in my blood screamed to part her slick thighs, to bury my face in the dark, glistening mound at her pelvis and lap at her sweet, scorching heat until she screamed my name.
No.
I clamped my jaw so hard my molars ground together, white-knuckling the headboard in absolute, teeth-grating agony.
I denied myself every touch, every slide, every primal demand of my beast. I kept my hips locked a rigid inch away from her softness, offering only the disciplined simmer of surface heat to keep her alive.
I checked the sliver of window between the blackout shutters. Outside in the Northern California night, the autumn equinox Harvest Moon was climbing past its peak, blazing over the timber ridges.
The hours were bleeding away. Sunrise was coming.
“Hold the line,” I rasped into the damp hollow behind her ear, pressing a kiss to her temple.
I matched my breathing to her shallow cadence, let my physical pulse drop, and felt that stomach-dropping plunge of astral projection—falling down the silver elevator shaft—and plunged straight back into the Dreamscape, to the bridge.
Avaline was still there, kneeling on the shale where I’d left her protected in my warded circle, her fingers poised over the cooling glass.
Her dark eyes tracked the broad line of my shoulders as I materialized beside her.
I locked my palm over hers, the heat between us flaring anew. “Next section. Weave the glass.”
Together, we poured our spirits into the span, her soul lending divine harmony to the unanchored magma of my blood. The bridge pushed out past the twenty-foot mark, a radiant spine of obsidian and gold arching over the river and into the twilight of the canyon on the other side.
Across the gulf, the white wolf stopped pacing.
She stood at the edge, her dark eyes fixed on us, her ears forward, sensing the road growing over the poison.
Behind her, the shadowy, fragmented forms of thousands of trapped dormant wolves stirred in the silver pastures of the Loom, lifting their heads toward the glowing bridge.
“It’s reaching the midpoint,” Avaline said, her hand trembling under mine. Her eyes went wide. “Reed—look at the canyon floor. Three deep currents... They’re surging in from somewhere beneath the Loom. It’s the three fonts Maren warned about.”
Then something changed.
The pearl-white river surged with a concussive roar.
What is that? My wolf went rigid, teeth bared, obsidian hackles standing tall. I smell—
Monsters swarmed out of the river and up the obsidian piers by the dozens, their segmented, chitinous limbs clattering against the glass, their hollow, weeping eye sockets glowing with corrupted light as they hissed and lunged for the bridge.
I drew in a sharp breath as the ancient lore came back to me. Bred in dark alchemy, chimeric beasts dripping silver venom.
Astral hounds! My obsidian wolf snarled, his golden eyes blazing. They feed on the souls of dormants! They will tear her spirit apart!
“They won’t touch her,” I said, the Founding Alpha in my marrow turning to iron.
The spectral beasts surged over the lip of the bridge. But the warded circle I had carved into the shale around Avaline flared incandescent, a dome of sacred protection that repelled the monsters, sending them hissing backward as the holy runes scorched their necrotic flesh.
She was safe inside my ward. But the unfinished bridge—and the Alpha holding its foundation—had no such shield.
The first spectral beast lunged onto the span, its venom-dripping claws snapping for the glowing glass.
I had half a second to choose. Because I was unmated, my magic lacked the self-sustaining ward that a fully mated Alpha commanded.
If I took my hands off the magma to fight the beasts, the unanchored span would instantly fracture and collapse into the boiling river, destroying Avaline’s only road to her wolf.
Or I could hold the road and absorb the strike.
Hold, my wolf commanded, his voice heavy with ancient grief. Hold the bridge.
I sank both palms deeper into the astral shale, pouring every ounce of my raw Founding fire into the obsidian, while the first spectral monster slammed into my back.
The beast’s claws were tipped with silver, and they raked down my spine, my shoulders, and the backs of my arms. The poison burned through my astral self, biting deep into the memories underneath—striking into the vault where I kept the night of the broken sanctuary, digging into the sound of Mia screaming for me from her crib while I lay paralyzed in the grass.
The monsters fed on grief, clawing deeper to rip my soul from the stone.
I locked my jaw, swallowed the blood rising in my throat, and held the glowing black bridge steady across the void. I kept my back bowed, shielding Avaline and her circle from the claws, refusing to let a single tremor of my agony travel down the tether to her heart.
They are tearing your spirit to shreds! the wolf roared, joining the fight alongside me. You are fighting without your mate’s seal—they’ll pull your soul into the river!
“Then she takes the step over my back,” I snarled through my teeth, blood hissing as it dripped from my chin onto the white-hot glass. “That’s an acceptable trade.”
I took the weight on my knees at the head of the bridge, drove both palms deeper into the glass, and held the fire with everything left in my spirit.
The Founding Alpha. The immovable mountain. Holding the line with his bare hands so his mate could walk free.
Beside me, my obsidian wolf dug his claws into the shale, baring his fangs at the sky and roaring a challenge that shook the canyon—man and beast anchoring the foundation together for the woman we had sworn to protect.
“I have the line, Avaline!” I rasped through the agony, my palms burning into the glass. “I’ll hold this road against every demon in the dark. Go get your wolf!”
Avaline looked at me, the tears on her cheeks catching the gold light of the magma, the steel in her jaw unbreakable.
“Then let’s finish it,” she said.
She lifted her chin, and set her bare foot onto the glowing black glass.
The road held.
The white wolf across the gulf lunged toward the far edge of the span, her paws touching the obsidian, the connection sparking between them like struck flint.
She was steps away from the other side of the river. Three steps from breaking the stasis of every dormant on the continent—
The shockwave hit.
Not from the canyon. Not from the river or the astral beasts—it came from the waking world outside, a blast that slammed through the Dreamscape, ringing the black shale and shattering the sky like struck crystal.
The obsidian bridge bucked violently under the impact throwing my mate into the astral sky.
The span faulted down the center, spider-webbing across the glass in a fraction of a second. Before I could pour more fire into the crack, the entire bridge exploded into ten thousand glowing embers, falling into the pearl-white river with a deafening roar.
—and my eyes slammed open in the dark of the bedroom.
“Avaline!”
I had her. My arms were locked around her naked, shivering body, our fingers tangled against her chest, the bond humming taut between our ribs.
But dust sifted from the concrete ceiling, the heater rattled against the wall, and the heavy deadbolt on the door sheared off its steel frame with a loud, metallic crack.
The door blew inward.
Nadia came through the threshold first, low and fast, rings flashing, a warded jar of elder-ash in her grip. Brann came in a stride behind her, a radio clutched in one fist and a sidearm raised in the other, his Sovereign presence filling the shattered doorway like a bulkhead.
“Reed!” Brann’s voice was stripped of all calm, ringing with combat urgency. “Get up! Get her up—we’ve been made!”