Chapter 18
Nate’s POV
Every time my claws sank into one of those shadow-men, my paws felt like they were being dipped in acid. They didn’t have hearts to puncture or throats to rip. They were just constructs; vessels for a malice that felt older than the pack itself.
“Alpha! The East wing is collapsing p>
I heard Silas scream through the link, but his voice was muffled, like he was shouting from underwater. The shadows were thick in the air now, it was a physical weight that made it hard to breathe, hard to see.
I swung my massive head, snapping the neck of a shadow-creature that had pinned a young guard to the wall. The thing evaporated into a foul-smelling mist, but three more rose from the floorboards to take its place.
Dahlia.
Her name was a roar in my mind. I had seen them on the terrace. I had seen her jump. That was the bravest, most terrifying thing I’d ever witnessed. But then the ground had simply… opened. The mountain had taken them.
I shifted back to my human form mid-stride, grabbing a discarded sword from the trophy display in the hallway. My skin was mapped with black veins where the shadows had touched me, and every breath felt like inhaling broken glass.
“Silas! Report!” I roared, kicking open the heavy oak doors to the Great Hall.
The sight stopped my heart. The Great Hall; the heart of the Silver-Crest was being dismantled. Not by an army, but by the stone itself. Huge fissures were snaking across the floor, and the ancient tapestries were catching fire from the blue lanterns held by the Elders who stood on the balconies, watching us die.
“They’re not stopping it, Alpha,” Silas gasped, stumbling toward me. His arm was hanging at a wrong angle, dripping blood. “The Elders… they’re chanting. They’re helping it p>
It was all happening too fast. I didn’t understand how it escalated to this point.
I looked up at the High Elder, Martha. She had held me when I was a pup. She had guided my father. Now, she stood above the hall with a face as cold as the dark shadows that haunted us.
“Martha!” I screamed, the Alpha command vibrated in my chest so hard that the remaining windows shattered. “Stop this! What have you done p>
She looked down at me, as her blue lantern casted long, demonic shadows across her face.
“The debt is overdue, Nathaniel. The Silver-Crest was built on a promise to the mountains. You and Dahlia tried to hide the heirs. You tried to keep the blood for yourself. The mountain does not forget p>
“They are children p>
“They are keys,” she countered. “And the door must be opened p>
The floor groaned again. It was a deep, terrifying sound that shook the very foundation of the house. A massive crack split the Great Hall in two.
I didn’t care about the house. I didn’t care about the title.
“Where are they?” I demanded, stepping toward the edge of the pit. “Where did the ground take them p>
“To the Cradle,” she whispered. “Where all Alphas begin, and where this line will end p>
I didn’t hesitate. I looked at Silas, who saw the madness in my eyes.
“Nate, no! It’s a mile drop p>
“Keep the pack alive, Silas,” I said, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “If I don’t come back, you’re the Alpha now p>
I didn’t wait for his protest. I shifted back into my wolf; the largest, most powerful form I had ever taken and I dived into the mountain.
Dahlia’s POV
We were trapped. The house was full of shadows, and the woods were full of the people who were supposed to be our leaders.
I looked at the kids, then at the heavy metal IV pole I was still clutching. I realized then that the “safe” pack I had brought them to was just as dangerous as the world I had fled.
“Aidan,” I whispered, as my voice hardened. “Do you remember the game we played in the city? The one where we stay very, very quiet and move like ghosts p>
Aidan nodded.
“We’re playing it now,” I said. “But this time, if anyone tries to catch us, you don’t hide. You bite p>
I turned away from the house and the Elders, looking toward the steep, jagged cliffs to the north. It was a suicide mission to climb them in the dark, but it was the only place they wouldn’t expect a mother with three kids to go.
We started running, but as we hit the first line of trees, the ground gave way.
A massive sinkhole opened up right beneath our feet, swallowed by the crying ground Axel had warned me about. We fell into the dark, and the last thing I heard before I lost consciousness was the sound of a heavy stone door sliding shut above us.
The silence was the first thing I noticed. It was so heavy it felt like it was pressing on my eardrums.
I groaned, pushing myself up from the floor that felt like smooth, cold glass. My head was screaming, and the metallic taste of blood was thick in my mouth.
“Aidan? Ariana? Axel p>
My voice was a tiny, fragile thing in the vast darkness.
“Mommy p>
A small hand touched my arm. It was Aidan. I could hear his teeth chattering in the dark.
“I’m here, baby. I’m here.” I pulled him into my lap, my hands frantically searching the dark until I found Ariana’s curls and Axel’s small, still form.
Axel was breathing, but he was deep in a trance. His skin felt hot and feverish.
“Where are we?” Ariana whispered, her voice trembling.
I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushed against the small emergency lighter I always kept since our days in the city. I flicked it.
The tiny flame came on, illuminating a space that made my blood turn to ice.
We weren’t in a cave like I had suspected. We were in a tomb.
The walls were lined with thousands of skulls, all carved directly into the rock. But they weren’t human. They were wolf skulls, some of them were massive, their empty eye sockets all directed toward the center of the room.
In the middle of the chamber stood a jagged pillar of white stone, the same stone Axel had been drawing for weeks.
And sitting at the base of the pillar was Gina.
My breath hitched.
She wasn’t wearing her designer clothes anymore. She was wrapped in a shroud of black silk, her eyes had gone completely white. In her hand, she held a curved knife.
“You really should have stayed in the city, Dahlia,” she said, her voice sounding like a chorus of a hundred people. “But I suppose the mountain wanted its blood fresh p>
I stood up, pushing the children behind me. The IV pole was gone, probably lost in the fall. I had nothing but my hands and a tiny lighter.
“You’re working with them?” I asked, trying to keep her talking while I looked for an exit. “The Elders? The shadows p>
“Working with them?” Gina laughed, it was a dry, hacking sound. “Dahlia, I am the sacrifice. Or I was supposed to be. But then you brought three perfect little replacements p>
She pointed the knife at Axel.
“The boy,” she whispered. “He hears it, doesn’t he? The mountain calling? He’s the first True Seer the pack has produced in five generations. His blood won’t just keep the mountain content, it will wake it up p>
“You’ll have to kill me first,” I said, my voice cold with terror.
“That’s the plan,” Gina said, rising to her feet. “But the mountain likes a show. It likes to see the mother break before the children bleed p>
From the shadows behind the pillar, the grey man from the hospital wing stepped out. But he wasn’t alone. Ten more like him emerged from the walls of skulls, with their red eyes fixed on us.
I looked at Aidan. I saw the terror in his eyes, but I also saw the spark. The same spark Nate had.
“Aidan,” I whispered. “The game is over. Run. Take your brother and sister and run into the tunnels. Don’t stop until you see the stars p>
“What about you?” he choked out.
I looked at Gina, who was raising the knife. I felt a strange calmness wash over me. I wasn’t an Alpha, I wasn’t so powerful, but I was a mother who had survived the worst streets in the world to keep these kids alive.
“I’m going to show them why you don’t mess with a Silver-Crest mother,” I said.
As Gina lunged, I didn’t move away. I moved toward her.
But I wasn’t looking at her knife. I was looking at the white stone pillar. If Axel had been drawing it, it meant he was connected to it. And if he was connected to it, maybe I could use that connection to burn this whole place down.
Just as Gina’s blade lunged toward my throat, the ceiling above us cracked.
A roar that sounded like a physical explosion shook the chamber, and a massive silver shape came crashing down from the heights, landing between me and the shadows with the force of a falling star.
It was Nate!
He was covered in blood, his fur was matted and torn, but his eyes were glowing with a primal, terrifying light. He didn’t look like a man. He didn’t even look like a wolf. He looked like an ancient god of vengeance.
“Get Away From My Family!” Nate growled, the sound was so powerful that it cracked the obsidian knife in Gina’s hand.
The real battle for the heirs had just begun.
“Nate,” I breathed, reaching out to touch the matted fur of his shoulder.
He didn’t turn, he couldn’t. His focus was locked on the grey men.
“Take… them Nate’s voice grated through the link, sounding like grinding stones. “The back… tunnel… Dahlia, go p>
“I’m not leaving you!” I shouted over the rising hum of the white pillar.
Gina stood across from us, staring at her shattered obsidian blade. She didn’t look afraid. She looked ecstatic. She wiped a smudge of black blood from her cheek and began to laugh; a high, brittle sound that made the children whimper.
“Do you see it, Nathaniel?” she cried, gesturing to the glowing veins of light pulsing within the white stone.
“The mountain isn’t rejecting you. It’s consuming you. Every drop of blood you spill here just feeds it. The more you fight, the faster the boy awakens p>
I looked down at Axel. His eyes were wide open now, but they weren’t his eyes. They were glowing with a cold, pale light that mirrored the pillar. He was standing up, his small feet moving rhythmically, as if he were walking to a beat only he could hear.
“Axel, no!” I grabbed his shoulders, but it was like trying to hold onto a statue. He was immovable.