“Hey,” Viper spoke softly, breaking through his panic. “Do you want me to do it?”
“No. I don’t want to cut myself or have you cut me with that sword you call a knife.”
The corners of Viper’s mouth curved upward in a devastating grin. “You don’t have to do this. We’ll find another way.” The second he finished speaking, the wolf snarled viciously. The warrior glared at the shifter. “Shut it, Bran. It has to be his choice.”
Juice cleared his throat. “Bran says the only choice he has is between us all living and dying. He provides us with his blood, or Bran will take it.”
Ward shuddered, his vivid imagination providing him with all the painful ways Bran would take his blood from him.
“Enough.” Viper nudged him and stepped between him and the others. He turned his back on them all and faced Ward. “He’s not wrong. I have no clue what’s going on. I don’t even know if I believe any of it, and I believe in CIA assholes who can turn into wolves on a whim.”
Knowing Viper was as confused as he was helped a little. If this man, this special forces operator, was freaking out a little too, then it made him feel a little less—he wasn’t sure what the word was—maybe stupid. “I can’t use the knife on myself.”
“Yeah, I know.” Viper reached for his hand and removed the pocket knife. He folded it and shoved it back at him.
Ward shoved the knife in his jeans pocket. “I can’t?—”
Viper caught his hand again. “Do you trust me to do it?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Will you try?” Viper’s thumb stroked over his skin. “Do we live or die? What’s a dinky cut when it comes to being vaporized by volcano vomit?
All their lives were a hell of a thing to put on his shoulders. He squeezed his eyes shut, “Do it. Do it before I—” pain lanced across his hand, “—oww, fuck.” It hurt like hell. But he forced his eyelids up and turned to the glyph where Viper’s blood still shimmered. His hand trembled, but he pressed it down on the symbol. The glyphs roared to life.
There was no other way to describe it. They didn’t just glow, they surged as ancient gold flared to burning white. A wind rushed through the chamber from nowhere and everywhere, whipping through their hair, bouncing flames that came out of nowhere to dance along the stones.
Fionn’s prison—his tomb—shook with the impact. From the crack in the wall, his voice boomed louder than it ever had. “The three have spoken,” Fionn said, voice a weapon and a benediction all at once. “The path is open.”
Bran whined low, soft, and mournful, and pressed his body against the shimmering edge of the split stone. The runes flared again, pale gold curling upward like breath escaping ancient lungs. He didn’t claw at the rocks this time. He pushed—slow, deliberate, his shoulders hunched, and his massive paws firm against the ground. Inch by inch, the wolf leaned forward, and the stone gave way. It yielded under his power. A ripple ran through the tunnel like a breathless sigh. The shimmering wall folded inward and parted, like water drawing back from the beach with the tide. The seal broke, and Bran stepped into the prison.
Viper pointed to the opening. “Go.” Juice stepped after his mate. Reaper, Zero, and Kaze followed him. “Come on, Sutherland, move your ass.”
Urged by Viper, he had no choice but to step into the magical prison that had held Fionn MacCumhaill for millions of years.
The moment Brancrossed the threshold, the heat of the chamber faded behind him. He slowed, padded to the center of the space within, and stilled. Then, with a long exhale that sounded almost human, his body bowed.
“Shift, hound.”
Unable to deny the command from his king, fur rippled backward over muscle. Bone shifted and reknit, limbs bent, and then straightened. The man took the wolf’s place, crouched on the dark stone floor, his breath heaving from the weight of the shift. Naked, with blood smeared down one arm, soot staining the other, Trace didn’t move for a second.
I can’t believe it.
Fionn is here.
He’s really here.
He surged to his feet and strode to the massive figure waiting in the chamber. “Fionn.” They collided like two parts of a storm—no words, no hesitation. The embrace was brutal as Trace buried his face in Fionn’s shoulder, fists curled into the remnants of some ancient garment that hung off the man’s massive frame. He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. He had been waiting lifetimes for this reunion. Now it was here, and he wasn’t sure he really believed it was happening.
Juice stepped up silently beside them, and he laid one hand on Trace’s back. His Grá Croí’s touch grounded him like nothing else could. Juice pushed a pair of tac pants and a black tee from the go-bag over his shoulder into his hands. “Here. Let’s not scar the academic more than we already have.”
“Too late,” Ward muttered under his breath.
Trace didn’t bother to respond. His hands shook as he pulled the fabric on, head ducked low, because he was afraid to look up and find this had all been some kind of dream.
Outside the prison, the chamber shook with the force of a pulse from the volcano. He turned to Fionn with desperation crackling in his voice. “I need your help.”
Fionn’s brow arched, and that slow, signature tilt of his head betrayed his curiosity beneath a calm Trace was sure none of them really felt. “You already have it, hound of mine.”
