"We’re exposed," I said, the realization settling heavy in my gut. "Sitting down here in the dark... It's not safety. It’s just waiting for the killing blow."
I felt a surge of helplessness so potent it nearly choked me. I was the Wolf. The Hunter. I solved problems with teeth and speed and instinct. Give me a throat to tear, and I’m happy. Give me a trail to follow, and I’ll run it until my paws bleed.
But how do you fight a goddess that’s ten steps ahead? How do I protect my mate, and Aria was my mate, when the enemy could wear the face of a healer, or a friend, or the stone ceiling above my head?
I looked at Aria’s hands. They were trembling in her lap. The golden markings were dull, barely visible. She was still tapped out. Empty. And we were trapped in a tomb with a potentially hostile deity knocking on the ceiling.
"We can't go back up," Thane stated the obvious, crossing his massive arms over his chest. "The tunnel is gone. Digging out would take days, even with my magic."
"So we go forward," Kaelen said, turning to look at the obsidian structure, the amplifier.
"Forward to where?" I asked, though I knew the answer. "To Olympus? To the living room of the bitch who just tried to drop a mountain on us?"
"Yes," Kaelen said, his voice hard. "Because down here, we are rats. Up there... we are gods."
"We areconstructs," I reminded him, bitterness coating my tongue. "Failed experiments."
"We are powerful," Kaelen countered, gold fire flaring in his eyes. "And we are angry. And we have the one thing they didn't account for."
He pointed his sword at Aria before quickly dropping it as a growl erupted out of me. "We have a door that fights back."
Aria looked up, her eyes seeking mine. She looked terrified. Not of the Skal, or the dark, or even death. She was terrified of the choice.
"I can't do it," she whispered as she watched me before turning to my brother. "I'm empty, Kaelen. I can't open the door. I tried to control the Skal, and I nearly passed out. Opening a portal to another dimension? It will kill me."
"Not if we fill the tank," I said, my voice rougher than I intended.
The conversation from earlier, before the Skal, before the tunnel, came rushing back.
Binding.
I looked at my brothers. Thane was grim, resigned. Elias looked sick but determined. Kaelen looked like he was about to walk into a fire he knew would burn him, but doing it anyway because it was the only path.
We were cornered. We were exposed. And the only way out wasthroughher.
FIFTEEN
Aria
"I know what you’re thinking," I said, my voice barely scratching its way out of my raw throat. I pushed gently against Flynn’s chest, creating just enough space to breathe, though the loss of his heat immediately made me shiver. "I can feel it. The bond isn't exactly subtle right now. It feels like four different flavors of desperation trying to pry my skull open."
"It's not desperation," Kaelen corrected, stepping closer, his boots crunching on the grit. The golden light in his eyes had dimmed to a smoldering ember, but the intensity hadn't waned. "It's necessity. The amplifier requires a vessel, Aria. A full vessel. Right now, you are running on vapor."
"And whose fault is that?" I snapped, the sudden spark of anger surprising even me. It felt good, though. It felt likeme, not the Prophecy Girl, or Pandora's Heir, or the Unbound Queen. Just Aria, who was tired of being treated like a magical item with legs.
I gestured to the cavern around us, to the oppressive darkness, the damp obsidian walls, and the nightmare crustacean currently guarding the door like a loyal retriever.
"Look at us," I said, my gaze sweeping over them. "Really look."
Flynn was half-naked, covered in rock dust. Kaelen’s tunic was shredded, his skin mapped with soot and fresh burns. Thane looked like a mountain that had crumbled, grey with fatigue, and Elias was vibrating with a nervous energy that made me dizzy just looking at him.
"We are a wreck," I said bluntly. "We are filthy, we are bleeding, and we are running on adrenaline that expired twenty minutes ago. And you think the solution is... what? To perform a high-stakes, cosmological binding ritual that requires, and I quote, 'absolute surrender'?"
I looked at Flynn, arching an eyebrow. "And I assume this ritual isn't just holding hands and singing hymns?"
The Wolf Prince had the decency to look slightly abashed, dragging a hand through his tangled, dirty hair. "It’s... energetic. Physical. It requires a release of inhibitors."
"Sex," I translated flatly. "You want to have a magical, five-way consummation on a cold rock down the hall from a dead Titan’s bone while a goddess hunts us. Not to mention we don't even know how those things wound up in the mortal realm. What if us performing this ritual or whatever so close to those things activates them somehow? What if you giving me a good boning transfers the magic to the actual bone instead of to me?"
