Sloane's POV
The dark wolves pour out of the forest like a nightmare coming to life.
Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Their fur is black as midnight, their eyes glow red, and they move together like one giant monster with a thousand heads.
The Corruption. The enemy from three thousand years ago. The ones who destroyed everything in the first age.
And they're here for us.
"Run!" Dacian shouts at Lenora's wolves. "Get to the pack house! Warn everyone! Evacuate now!"
Most of them don't need to be told twice. They scatter, racing toward the pack house to sound the alarm. But a few stay frozen in terror, staring at the approaching army.
Lenora is one of them. For all her talk about being strong and challenging Dacian's leadership, she's rooted to the spot, trembling.
"Lenora, move!" I scream at her.
She doesn't budge. Her eyes are locked on the dark wolves, and I realize she's not just scared—she's seeing something we're not. Something from her past.
One of the dark wolves breaks from the pack and runs straight at her. It's moving impossibly fast, covering the distance in seconds.
I don't think. I just react.
I shift into my wolf form mid-run and tackle Lenora out of the way. The dark wolf's jaws snap closed on empty air where her throat was a second ago. It snarls and turns on me instead.
Up close, I can see it's not really a wolf. It's something wearing a wolf's shape. Its teeth are too long, its claws are made of shadow, and when it breathes, black smoke comes out.
It lunges at me. I dodge left, but it's fast—faster than any normal wolf. Its claws rake across my side and pain explodes through me.
Then Theron is there in his massive bronze-scaled wolf form, slamming into the dark wolf and sending it flying. Calix appears on my other side, lightning crackling around his gray fur.
"You okay?" Calix's voice echoes in my head through our bond.
"I'm fine," I lie. My side is bleeding badly, but there's no time to worry about it.
The rest of the dark wolf army reaches us.
All hell breaks loose.
Dacian fights in his Alpha wolf form, bigger and stronger than I've ever seen him. His jaws close around one dark wolf's neck and it dissolves into smoke. But two more immediately take its place.
Kieran is a white blur, his red eyes blazing as he tears through the enemy ranks. But even he's getting overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.
"There's too many!" Theron shouts in our minds. "We need to retreat!"
"No!" Dacian's voice booms in our heads. "If we retreat, they'll chase us straight to the pack house where all the civilians are!"
He's right. We have to hold them here, buy time for everyone else to escape.
I feel the nexus power building between the five of us again. That same energy that disintegrated the Devourer earlier. If we can tap into it, maybe we can—
Pain lances through my head, so intense I stumble. It's not my pain. It's coming through the bond. Through all the bonds.
Someone's hurting us. All of us at once.
I look around wildly and spot the source. Standing at the edge of the forest, watching the battle with cold eyes, is a figure in a black cloak. They're holding something that glows with sick green light—some kind of crystal or stone.
Every time it pulses, pain shoots through our bonds.
"The nexus!" Kieran gasps. "They're attacking our nexus!"
"Who is that?" I demand.
The figure lowers their hood, and my blood runs cold.
It's a woman. Old, with gray hair and cruel smile. But what makes my stomach drop is the mark on her forehead—a symbol I recognize from Seraphine's memories.
The mark of the Corruption's high priestess.
"Morgath," Kieran breathes. "But she died. I watched her die in the final battle."
"Apparently not," the woman calls out, her voice carrying across the battlefield. "Did you really think killing my body would destroy me? I'm a spirit-walker, you fool. I've been jumping from vessel to vessel for three thousand years, waiting for this moment."
She holds up the glowing crystal. "Do you know what this is? It's a nexus-breaker. Created specifically to destroy Primordial bonds. I've been searching for one since the old age, and I finally found it six months ago." Her smile widens. "Right around the time your precious Seraphine started dying from her broken bond."
"You," Dacian snarls. "You're the one who sent the rogues to attack me. You broke my wolf on purpose."
"Of course I did," Morgath says. "I needed to trigger the secondary bonds. I needed all five of you to come together and form the complete nexus. Because once you did..." She raises the crystal high. "I could do this."
The crystal pulses with green light, so bright it hurts to look at.
And I feel something inside me break.
Not just break. Shatter.
The bond with Theron—gone.
The bond with Calix—severed.
The bond with Kieran—snapped like a rope pulled too tight.
Even the bond with Dacian, the one that was already broken, disappears completely.
All five bonds, destroyed in an instant.
I shift back to human form without meaning to and collapse on the ground. Around me, the others do the same. We're all naked, all gasping for air, all clutching our chests where the bonds used to be.
The pain is indescribable. It feels like someone reached into my chest and ripped out my heart.
"No," I whisper. "No, no, no..."
Without the bonds, I can't feel them anymore. Can't sense their emotions. Can't share their strength. We're just five separate wolves instead of one united force.
And the nexus power? Gone.
Morgath laughs. "There we go. Now you're just ordinary wolves again. Powerful, yes, but not invincible. Not like you were with the nexus intact."
The dark wolves sense the change. They attack with renewed fury, sensing weakness.
Dacian struggles to his feet, blood running down his shoulder from a wound I didn't see him take. "We have to destroy that crystal. It's the only way to restore the bonds."
"Good luck with that," Morgath says. She tosses the crystal to one of the dark wolves—a massive beast with scars across its face. "Kill them. But bring me the crystal intact. I have other uses for it."
The scarred wolf catches the crystal in its jaws and runs.
"After it!" Kieran shouts.
But we're surrounded by dark wolves, all of them trying to tear us apart. Fighting through them will take time we don't have.
That's when I hear the screaming.
Coming from the direction of the pack house.
"No," Dacian breathes. "The civilians."
A runner wolf—one of Lenora's group who stayed to watch the battle—comes racing toward us. "Alpha! The pack house is under attack! A second army of dark wolves came from the east! They're slaughtering everyone!"
My heart stops. "How many?"
"Hundreds! Maybe more! And they have something with them—some kind of monster. It's eating people, Alpha. It's actually eating them."
Theron grabs the runner by the shoulders. "How long do we have?"
"Minutes," the runner says, his eyes wide with terror. "Maybe less. They're breaking down the doors. The children are trapped inside."
I look at Dacian. Even beaten and bloody and stripped of our bonds, he's still my husband. Still the Alpha I fell in love with.
"We split up," he says. "Theron, Calix, Kieran—go after the crystal. Get it back and destroy it. Restore the bonds."
"What about you?" Theron asks.
Dacian looks at me. "Sloane and I will defend the pack house."
"That's suicide," Calix argues. "You just said there are hundreds of them."
"I know." Dacian's jaw sets in that stubborn way I know so well. "But those are our people. Our pack. We're not abandoning them."
He's right. We can't. Even if it kills us.
Kieran hesitates, clearly torn. Then he nods. "We'll get the crystal back. I swear it."
"You better," I tell him. "Because if you don't, we're all dead anyway."
Theron and Calix shift back into their wolf forms. Kieran does the same. The three of them take off after the scarred wolf carrying the crystal, fighting through the dark wolf ranks.
Dacian and I are left standing in a sea of enemies.
"Ready?" he asks me.
I shift into my wolf form. Without the nexus bonds, I'm smaller than before. Weaker. But I'm still a wolf, and I'm still going to fight for my pack.
"Ready," I say.
We run toward the pack house together, dark wolves chasing us from every direction.
As we run, I hear Morgath's laughter echoing behind us.
"Run, little Primordials! Run to your deaths! This is how it was always meant to end!"
We burst through the tree line and I see the pack house ahead.
The doors are broken. Windows are shattered. Dark wolves are pouring inside.
And standing in front of the house, easily twenty feet tall, is the monster the runner mentioned.
It's not a Devourer. It's something worse. Something I recognize from Seraphine's oldest memories.
A Void Beast. A creature from before the world was fully formed. A nightmare given flesh.
It has no eyes, just a massive mouth full of teeth that spirals down into darkness. And as I watch in horror, it picks up one of our pack members—a young male I recognize as Marcus, Lenora's grandson—and drops him into that mouth.
Marcus's screams cut off abruptly.
The beast turns its eyeless face toward us and opens its mouth wider.
"Dacian," I whisper. "We can't fight that thing."
"I know," he says.
"So what do we do?"
Before he can answer, the Void Beast lunges at us, moving impossibly fast for something so huge.
And in that moment, I realize something terrible.
We're not going to survive this.