11 Reed
Her head lolled into the crook of my arm as her eyes closed, the frost on her dark lashes catching the dim amber glow of the cabin bedroom.
She’s down, my wolf growled in the back of my skull. Hold the tether. Drop.
I pressed my mouth to the frozen curve of her temple, breathed in her scent, and let go of the physical world.
The transition was a vertical plunge through fire and ice.
One heartbeat I was naked in the bed, holding the shivering frame of my mate against my ribs. The next, the astral air of the Dreamscape slapped across my face.
For three strides, the ground beneath our boots was rich, sun-drenched turf.
The sweet scent of blooming honeysuckle and wild clover hung in the warm summer air, beneath an endless canopy that hummed with primal wolf-song.
This was the sacred territory where our spirits were born to run—unbroken, whole, running shoulder to shoulder beneath a clear celestial sky.
Then the world ripped open.
The green meadow died at our feet, sheared off in a jagged cliff of black shale that plunged into the dark. The sweet scent of honeysuckle rotted into the choking, sulfurous reek of chemical lavender. Overhead, the golden sky bruised into an ugly, mottled yellow and rancid violet.
Below us lay the canyon.
A scar carved straight through the Dreamscape, churning with a boiling, pearl-white river of corrupted aurum latens.
And across that impossible expanse, standing on the far bank in the silver fog of the unpoisoned Loom, was Avaline’s white wolf.
The beast stood tall, silver-tipped fur bristling against the spectral wind, her dark eyes locked onto the ledge where Avaline and I knelt.
Behind her, deep in the silver mist, at least a thousand other dormant wolf spirits paced in restless, agonizing stasis.
The stolen, poisoned souls of dormant shifters imprisoned across the continent—stood packed along the far ridges, their eyes burning through the fog, waiting in breathless silence for someone to break the dam and give them back their bodies.
Beside me, Avaline gasped as her astral form solidified on the black shale.
She was on her knees, her dark hair whipped by the caustic gale, her astral dress dark with shale dust. The sheer proximity of her in the spirit-realm sent a jolt of raw mate-heat straight into my blood.
Even here, stripped to the bare essence of our souls, her presence was commanding, her unbending will shining through the gloom like polished steel.
Hostiles rising, my black wolf snarled, stepping up beside my right shoulder.
Rising from the boiling white spray were dozens of faceless monsters—hooded shadows and spectral hounds whose pale claws scraped against the black shale as they swarmed, eager to tear any intruder into raw spirit-matter.
Avaline reached out, her cold hand closing over my wrist. “We build the bridge now. When all three reservoirs blow together, I cross.”
I approached and dropped to both knees at the edge of the riverbank and drove both hands deep into the black shale.
Founding fire ignited in my veins.
Every drop of flame I pulled from the bedrock tore through my shoulders like barbed wire. My forearms blistered, the skin splitting and smoking where the caustic astral spray lashed my flesh, but I didn’t yield an inch.
Magma bled up through the black stone, thick and luminous, glowing with ancient gold veins.
Beside me, Avaline pressed her palm flat over the back of my hand. Her soul leaned into mine, humming against my pulse, weaving the silver threads of her blood into the molten obsidian, shaping the liquid fire into a massive, arched bridge that reached out across the foaming river.
A dozen spectral hounds exploded over the riverbank.
My black wolf lunged forward alone to protect our perimeter. His massive jaws snapped shut around the first hound’s throat, crushing it to shadow-dust, but the swarm was relentless. Three more beasts lunged from the mist, their necrotic fangs sinking deep into his flanks.
A sharp, searing agony ripped through my own chest in the waking world. I tasted copper, my breath hitching as my wolf roared in pain, black astral blood spraying across the stone. He thrashed, still fighting, but more horrors poured over the ledge, dragging him down by his haunches.
A hooded creature slipped past his bleeding flank, its pale talons slashing straight toward Avaline’s throat.
My warded circle protected her. Even so, Avaline ducked, her teeth bared in defiance, her fingers never leaving my wrist as she fought to keep our silver thread from snapping.
I couldn’t pull my hands from the rock. If I broke contact with the source to fight, the obsidian bridge would dissolve into the boiling river below, taking Avaline’s only path with it. But if I stayed on my knees, the beasts would slaughter me right in front of her.
I can’t protect her and hold the bridge at the same time, the agonizing thought tore through my mind, helplessness choking my throat. My fire isn’t enough. I’m failing her again—
Then the air tore open behind us with the thunderous, earth-shaking roar of an entire pack.
Through the silver Threshold of the Dreamscape, the bonded wolves of my pack struck the shale like lightning. Their human bodies were out in the real world, setting the timed charges, but their wolf spirits answered the call of the pack link, slamming between us and the swarm.
Brann’s massive ember wolf hit the ground like a falling meteor, his molten eyes blazing as he crushed three horrors beneath his broad paws, while Wren’s silver-black wolf darted at his flank, severing throats with lethal grace.
Santos’ umber wolf tore through the left flank, his dark coat flashing as Nell’s swift wolf drove the flanking beasts over the cliff.
From the right, Levi’s scarred black wolf smashed through the astral hounds with devastating brutality, breaking spines with every snap, while Genny’s moonlit white wolf severed throats in blinding arcs.
On the high rocks, Tommy’s midnight wolf dropped to crush the climbing horrors, flanked by Kaia’s powerful golden wolf, while Finn’s ash wolf drove his paws into the stone to anchor our bedrock, and Sloane’s wolf circled our line, shredding the remaining stragglers to mist.
Ten mated wolves formed an impenetrable, roaring wall of fangs and fire around our circle.
My wolf tore himself free from the bloody heap, shaking the dark ichor from his pelt, and took his place at the bridgehead beside Avaline.
We hold the ridge! Brann’s Sovereign roar thundered through the pack link. Pour the stone, Reed. Get your mate across.
Relief surged through my blood like liquid adrenaline.
I threw every ounce of my soul into the bedrock.
Molten obsidian roared from my palms, shooting across the chasm in a wide, glowing highway.
Avaline kept the silver alignment locked, her breathing ragged, her cheek brushing my shoulder as the span reached eighty feet across the abyss—only ten feet short of the far shore.
Across the canyon, the trapped wolf spirits paced the silver ridges.
Through the pack link, the countdown echoed in unison:
Ready. Santos’ wolf broadcast.
All set. Tommy’s wolf roared.
We’re hot. Levi’s wolf snarled.
Three... two... one... NOW!
We braced.
One second passed. Two. Three.
The Dreamscape went deathly, suffocatingly still.
From the deep channels below, a dark, viscous surge began to swell—the toxic waters rising toward our bridge.
“Reed...” Avaline’s voice cracked. “Did the timers fail? If they don’t blow together—”
And then—
Triple concussive shockwaves slammed into the astral sky from east, north, and west at once. The bruised canopy shattered like brittle glass, the rotten air imploding inward with a deafening sonic roar.
The pearl-white river of aurum latens convulsed. The rising surges that had fed the deep collapsed, the backwash choking off at the roots. Below our span, the boiling white tide shuddered, stagnant and unsupplied, trapped in the ancient gorge. The pressure holding back the crossing dropped.
The obsidian bridge held solid.
Across the great expanse, the trapped wolf spirits threw back their heads and let out a deafening, unified howl of liberation that shook the heavens.
“RUN!” I screamed, the roar tearing raw from my throat. “Avaline—RUN!”
She ran.
She broke into a dead sprint, bare feet pounding the black glass, five feet from the far bank where her white wolf leaned over the edge with bared teeth, reaching across twenty years of darkness—
A group of spectral horrors lunged from the vapor, clawing at her heels.
My black wolf bounded onto the span in a blur of obsidian power, snapping the spine of the lead beast and clearing her path with savage shoulder-checks, shoving her with his broad flank across the final gap.
Avaline vaulted through the air and landed hard on the solid turf of the far shore.
She made it, my wolf howled, landing beside her, his triumphant cry ringing across the newly cleared sky. She’s—
The temperature plunged.
Not toward the freezing cold of the chemical stasis.
Past it. Down through zero and out the bottom into an absolute, necrotic void that froze the steam in mid-air.
A thick crust of black frost shot across my molten obsidian bridge, fracturing the glass and instantly extinguishing the magma at the source.
The bruised sky above the canyon tore open like rotten canvas.
No, my wolf whispered, backing away from the tear, his golden eyes wide with unprecedented terror. No... not that... not her...
The pack wolves on the ridge froze, their ears pinning back as the foul, freezing stench washed over the plain.
Something dropped down through the tear.
It landed on the bank next to me with a sickening crunch of breaking bone. The shape rose, its joints popping and twisting into place with unnatural fluidity, radiating a freezing aura that withered the silver grass to black rot.
I looked at the ancient horror.
It looked back at me with my sister’s face.
Mia.
Her eyes were dead. Flat, hollow voids lit from within by something ancient, rotting, and stacked in infinite layers behind her pupils.
The obsidian bridge groaned behind me, spider-webbing with cracks over the boiling poison in the gorge.
My wolf stood paralyzed across the chasm at Avaline’s side, his throat working with soundless agony.
Mia’s dead lips curved into a cold, necrotic smile. When she spoke, a thousand layered voices whispered through her throat.
“There you are,” she said. “The whole family. At last.”