The truce held.
It wasn't friendship. It was a ceasefire born of necessity.
For the next few days, their training became a sadistic carousel. Emin broke her body with silent, brutal sparring. Damaris broke her mind with rigid mathematical shielding. Asher broke the tension, dragging her onto rooftops to remind her that gravity didn't care about politics.
They were an unholy, dysfunctional machine. Gears grinding, sparks flying. But for the first time, the wheels were actually turning.
The quiet was shattered on a Tuesday.
Ellsa didn't knock. She scrambled into the bunker, looking like she'd seen a ghost in broad daylight. Her hands were empty—no food, no medical supplies. Just bad news.
"It's worse," the mouse-woman whispered. Her eyes darted to the tunnel entrance, terrified that the shadows were listening. "I tapped the high-level comms. Nyzor isn't just hunting for Ravenna. He's excavating."
She took a breath, but it was shaky.
"He's looking for the Anima Stone."
Damaris was holding a piece of chalk. It snapped in his fingers as dust coated the floor.
His face went stark white. Not the pale of study, but the pale of a man watching his life's work burn.
"The Anima Stone," he repeated. A breath. "That is impossible. It was sealed beneath the Spires centuries ago."
"What is it?" Ravenna demanded.
"It is the source code," Damaris said. His voice gained a frantic, jagged edge. "It doesn't just grant power; it compiles it. Legend says it was used to knit the first Hybrids together. If Nyzor gets that stone and binds it to you, Ravenna, he won't just control you."
He looked at her. His face dead serious.
"He will possess the very definition of your magic. He could rewrite the laws of physics with your blood."
The revelation settled on the room like lead.
This wasn't just about survival anymore. This was an existential threat level.
Bigger than me. Bigger than us. End of the world type stuff.
"We get to the Stone first," Emin stated.
His Alpha instincts locked onto the target. Rage channeled into a weapon. Simple but brutal.
"It's likely buried near the old Coven ruins," Asher muttered from the corner. He was sharpening a knife, but his rhythm had stopped. "Deep in the Dead Zone. Maximum security. You'll need a ghost to get in, not an army."
The mission gave them something they lacked: An external enemy big enough to make them forget they hated each other.
"Before we move," Damaris insisted, "we run the synchronization. Full circuit. If we enter the Dead Zone as a fragmented mess, we die at the gate."
They formed a tight circle.
Emin, Damaris, Asher and Ravenna.
"We will not aim for 'calm'," Damaris instructed. He sounded like a general on the eve of a losing battle. "We aim for unified focus. Alpha, focus on protection. Rogue, evasion. Hybrid, stability. Send only the intent of the mission."
Ravenna closed her eyes.
She reached out. Braced for the usual car crash of emotions.
But this time, it was different.
Emin: A solid, iron wall. Unmovable. Protective weight. Damaris's presence was a clean, sharp line of logical focus.
Asher's presence was a swift, silent stream of alertness.
The Mate Bond accepted the input. The emotions flowed smoothly. Converging into a single, humming intention.
It's working, Ravenna realized. We're actually one mind.
She drew the unified energy into her core. It hummed. Stable. Potent.
She channeled it and successfully cast a small, perfectly formed, stable grounding spell. The first stable spell she had ever cast.
It was a beautiful, powerful moment of unity. The spell held, clean and strong.
"Success," Damaris breathed out. A rare flicker of victory in his grey eyes. "We have achieved functional unity. We are a team."
Emin gave a curt nod, his face grim but satisfied. "Good. Then we move."
Asher, always the fastest, moved toward the edge of the circle. But just as the spell broke, a sharp, sudden emotion hit the Mate Bond.
It was not anger or shame, but pure, paralyzing fear.
The emotion was so intense and so foreign that Ravenna gasped, dropping her focus. It wasn't Emin's fear of failure or Damaris's fear of chaos. This was deep, primal, and overwhelming.
Asher. That's Asher's fear.
Asher froze, his body locked in silent panic. He staggered back, his eyes wide and devoid of all cynicism, reflecting a terrifying vulnerability.
"Rogue!" Emin barked, stepping toward him, sensing the instant weakness.
Asher snapped back to himself, slamming his mental shields down. The fear vanished, replaced by a fiercer layer of guarded hostility.
He glared at them—at Emin's concern, at Damaris's scrutiny, and at Ravenna, who had felt the depths of his secret terror.
What are you so afraid of?
"Ellsa is waiting." Asher said, his voice completely flat and cold. "The Dead Zone is our only option. We go now."
He turned and bolted toward the exit tunnel, his swift, silent movements a mask for the secret wound he had momentarily exposed.
The three remaining mates were left staring at the tunnel entrance, the success of the synchronization completely forgotten. The team was stable, but the Rogue was the new, terrifying and unpredictable variable.
The hunt for the Anima Stone had begun.