I nodded, silent.
We waited, the air thick with blood and fear and the sweet, electric promise of rescue.
And somewhere in that chaos, I knew Finn was coming.
All I had to do was hold on.
Hell came apart from the top down.
The first sign was the shift in sound—a roar, then silence, then a higher-pitched shriek that didn’t sound like anything human or animal. It was the kind of noise that made the stone sweat, that made every cell in your body want to curl up and quit. It rolled through the dungeon in waves, loosening centuries of dust and rust, setting every chain and bar to humming.
Adramal, for all his calm, looked rattled. He knelt at my feet, slipping the chain off my ankle with hands that trembled only a little. “Hang on,” he muttered, not meeting my eye. “The way is not clear.”
But every instinct in me screamedGO.
Another shockwave hit—closer this time. The torches along the wall blew out, plunging us into strobing darkness as emergency magic fizzled and guttered. I could smell blood now—thick and clotted, layered over the rotten citrus of demonsweat.
I heard Nazek scream again, this time from the far end of the hall. Something big and fast hit the door, hard enough to buckle the iron, then the hinges gave out, and it crashed inward. Demons were running away.
In the flickering gloom, I saw a shape—a blur of black hair and high, elegant cheekbones. Lucia. She was beautiful, even when she was covered in blood up to the elbows and her lips were curled back in a snarl.
She moved with inhuman speed, cutting down the first demon she saw with a knife so sharp it barely left a mark before the head dropped off. She moved to the next, a downward slash opening the chest like a zipper. The bodies barely had time to fall before she was on the third, shoving the blade up under the chin and out the top of the skull.
Behind her, the hallway filled with screams, crashes, and the wet, meaty thud of violence.
The knot in my chest immediately loosened, and I threw off the chains.
From somewhere above, I heard a voice—Wrecker, I realized, cussing a blue streak as he fought his way down the stairwell.
“Come on, you ugly fuckers! That’s right, line up! This monster has got a present for everyone of you!”
The sounds of claws against stone, of flesh tearing, of bones breaking were everywhere.
It should have scared me. It did, but the fear was laced with a wild, desperate hope.
They were here. My pack. My family.
I pulled myself up by the bars on the chair, using every muscle left. I was on my feet, my legs finding their strength. Suddenly a rush of demons slammed through the cell door—four, maybe five, their eyes all lit up with panic, not hate.
They didn’t attack. They ran. Past me, past Adramal, straight for the back wall, where a tunnel sloped away into blackness.
Lucia followed, stepping over bodies without even glancing down. She saw me, and for a moment, our eyes locked. She bared her bloody teeth in what I decided to interpret as a smile.She made eye contact with me. "Hold on little wolf. Your Finn comes." Then she blurred after the fleeing demons.
Then the stairwell exploded, and Finn was there.
He came out of the smoke, his eyes so green they hurt to look at. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice. He ran straight for me, leaping bodies in a way that would have looked ridiculous if it wasn’t so beautiful.
He caught me, one arm around my waist, the other tangling in my filthy hair.
Wrecker burst through, half-shifted, his hands claws and his teeth elongated just enough to give his threats extra weight. He was covered in blood and demon goo, his shirt torn to ribbons, his jeans black with demon goo.
He saw me and gave a manic grin. “You look like shit, Brie. Good to see ya.”
I opened my mouth to thank him, but the sound that came out was pure animal—some kind of mix between a sob and a howl.
Behind him, the hallway filled with more wolves—Arsenal, eyes wild and teeth flashing; Big Papa, his bulk blocking the entire passage; Doc, glasses gone, eyes glowing like embers.
They barely registered Adramal. He held up his hands, stepping aside.
