The cave walls pulsed like a living throat around them.
Selene pressed her palms against the stone, trying to steady the world as Kael's stolen power writhed beneath her skin. Her vision swam with impossible clarity...she could see the individual cells of Cyrus's torn fingernails, count the droplets of condensation sliding down stalactites twenty feet above.
Too much. Too sharp.
Cyrus grabbed her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. His injured eye had gone fully black, the pupil swallowing the iris. "Focus. Breathe through it."
She sucked in air that tasted like iron and damp earth. "Something's wrong with the bond. Kael..."
A wolf howled outside. Close.
Too close.
Cyrus's head snapped toward the entrance. "They've got our scent."
Selene's new senses caught what he couldn't...the creak of leather armor, the whisper of steel being drawn, the acrid stench of fear-sweat from at least six warriors. And beneath it all...
Fire.
"They're going to smoke us out," she whispered.
Cyrus's jaw tightened. He reached into his boot and drew out a rusted hunting knife...likely the only weapon he'd managed to steal during his escape. "Then we go deeper."
A roar of flame answered from the cave mouth, orange light licking at the tunnel walls. Smoke billowed inward, carrying the stink of burning wolfsbane.
Selene's shadows surged instinctively, forming a protective cocoon around them both. But when the smoke touched her magic, it burned...the wolfsbane-laced fumes eating through her defenses like acid.
Cyrus coughed violently, blood speckling his lips. "N-not working..."
She grabbed his arm, dragging him backward as the fire advanced. The cave narrowed around them, the ceiling dipping lower until they were forced to crawl. The heat at their backs grew unbearable.
Then...
Her palm hit open air.
The tunnel opened into a cavern so vast her enhanced vision couldn't find the ceiling. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the stone high above, painting the scene in eerie silver.
And at the center...
A stone altar, crusted with centuries of blood.
Cyrus made a choked sound. "Oh gods..."
Selene's new senses caught the residual magic first...layers upon layers of suffering soaked into the stone. This was no animal den.
This was a place of sacrifice.
A thunderous crack echoed through the tunnel behind them as the fire reached something volatile in the rock. The explosion sent debris raining down, sealing the entrance in a cloud of dust.
Silence fell.
Then...
"I wondered if you'd find your way here."
Selene whirled.
Roran leaned against the altar, his blue-lit eyes glowing in the dark. But it wasn't just him anymore...his skin stretched unnaturally over his bones, his jaw unhinging slightly with each word. The stolen Alpha power pulsed beneath his ribs like a second heartbeat.
"Kael sends his regards," he said with a grin too wide for his face.
Blood Moon Dungeon
Kael hung from his chains, his breathing shallow.
The hollowing had carved him out from the inside...his Alpha power gone, leaving only a gnawing void where his strength had been. He could still feel Selene through the bond, but distantly, like shouting through a storm.
The cell door creaked open.
Orric stepped inside, his boots crunching on the straw. "You look like shit, boy."
Kael didn't have the strength to lift his head.
His father grabbed his hair, forcing their eyes to meet. "Roran found your bitch. In the old sacrificial caves."
Ice flooded Kael's veins.
Orric smiled. "He'll bring her back in pieces. Unless..." He drew a dagger...Selene's dagger, the one stolen from her cabin. "You swear fealty to me. Right here. Right now."
The blade pressed against Kael's bare chest, just above his heart.
"Choose."
The Cavern
Selene's shadows lashed out before she could think.
Roran laughed as they struck him, the darkness sliding off his skin like water. "Still don't understand, do you?" He spread his arms. "We're the same now. You. Me. The First Shadow."
Cyrus stepped forward, his knife raised. "You're not anything."
Roran moved faster than Selene could track...one moment by the altar, the next with his hand wrapped around Cyrus's throat. "I remember you," he purred. "How you screamed when I took your eye."
Selene lunged.
Her claws...since when did she have claws?...raked across Roran's back. He howled, dropping Cyrus as black blood welled from the wounds.
"You BITCH!"
His retaliatory strike sent her flying into the altar. Stone cracked against her spine, the impact driving the breath from her lungs.
Roran loomed over her, his blue eyes burning. "The Blood Moon rises tomorrow," he hissed. "And when it does, I'll carve out your heart and feed it to Kael while he watches."
Then he dissolved...
...into a swarm of moths that spiraled up through the cracks in the ceiling.
Silence.
Cyrus crawled to her side, his breathing ragged. "We need... to get to Kael."
Selene stared at her hands...now tipped with obsidian claws, her veins pulsing with stolen Alpha power.
The bond between her and Kael was fading fast.
And she knew, with terrible certainty, that if it broke completely...
...neither of them would survive it.