I can feel it—those invisible threads inside me loosening for the first time in forever, touching theirs, recognizing something ancient and familiar at the same time.
Then a voice flows through my mind.
You are safe now, my queen.
Not a question. A vow.
Movement everywhere—heads turning, bodies shifting. All of them looking at me at once.
Gray’s wolf form lifts, ears forward. Rhett’s hand stills mid-gesture. Stellan’s head snaps up from where he’s kneeling. Jace’s blade lowers. Theo’s eyes widen. Wes goes perfectly still.
They heard it too.
I’ve forgotten what their presence feels like.
My chest aches with the effort of breathing, but the fear doesn’t come. Just warmth spreading slowly through my ribs, my pulse syncing with the rhythmic sound of the men around me.
Rhett moves closer to me, firelight catching the worry in his eyes.
“Bree?”
I want to answer. I think I do. But the world tilts again, and the silver light folds over me like a blanket.
The last thing I feel is warmth—real, impossible warmth—seeping through my bones.
Then nothing.
Chapter 7
Thane
The chamber settles into an uneasy stillness.
Bree’s unconscious again, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. The Nightmares hold their perimeter—creatures I never thought I’d see outside of myth, let alone standing guard over someone I’ve failed to protect. Their presence fills the space like pressure before a storm, and I can’t decide if they’re salvation or just another variable I can’t control.
I lean against the obsidian wall, arms crossed.
If we survive this—when we survive this—we need to move fast. Get them somewhere defensible. Figure out what the year in this place has done to all of us. What it’s done to her.
Theo moves.
No warning. No announcement. He just crosses the chamber and drops to his knees beside Bree.
“She doesn’t deserve this,” he says quietly, reaching for the chains wrapped around her wrists. “I won’t sit here and watch her die.”
“Theo—” Stellan starts.
Too late.
Theo’s fingers close around the silver metal. “I see you,” he whispers.
Light flares—blinding, searing—and Theo gasps, muscles locking. The chain burns through his skin, but he doesn’t let go.
His eyes glow white-silver, Sight fully open. Patterns overlay the chains, intricate and alien, pulsing with the same rhythm as the veins in the walls.
“I can see it,” he grits out. “The pattern—”
Seth’s eyes snap open.
