Trace shook his head. “No. I mean—” He over his shoulder at the SEALs. “Them. My Grá Croí. My brothers. The volcano—thisfucking island—it’s going to bury them alive. I don’t have enough strength left to protect them all. Not from this. But you…you’re still the High King.”
Fionn’s expression didn’t change at first. Then something behind his gaze shifted. Like the weight of centuries tilted forward onto his spine. His eyes scanned the men still held at the threshold. Viper. Juice. Reaper. Kaze. Zero. Hardened warriors with weapons drawn and nerves like tripwires. Not one of them flinched under that gaze.
Fionn turned back to him and placed one large hand on his shoulder. “You would ask me to spend the last of what I have, not to escape, but to save those who followed you into fire?”
Trace didn’t blink. “They didn’t follow me. They stood beside me. I’d stay with them, and I’ll die beside them without a second thought. But I won’t leave them.”
A beat passed. Then two. Then Fionn’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “Then bring them. Between us, we can hold the portal long enough.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The mountain was losingits goddamn mind. Viper didn’t need seismic readings or satellite telemetry to tell him they were out of time. He felt it in the ground, the deep-bone vibrations that carried the rage of the earth itself. It was flexing, coiling, breathing. A living thing, and he knew—he felt it in his soul—that the island was minutes away from unleashing all hell.
He stood with his boots braced wide on the basalt floor, sweat pouring down his spine, and watched the two figures at the center of the cavern work in silence as the air hummed around them. Although he mused it wasn’t exactly a hum—more like the resonance of a war drum held too long in check.
Trace was crouched low to the ground, his palm pressed flat against the stone as golden light pulsed from his skin in threads that crawled outward like lightning veins across the floor. Beside him, towering, ancient, and utterly unfazed by the dying volcano above their heads, stood Fionn mac fucking Cumhaill. The High King of the Fianna. The shit of Irish legend and ghost stories. Except he wasn’t a story anymore. He was here. He was real, and he radiated power so thick even Viper could feel it.
Fionn’s hands were bare and stained with something that might have been old blood or volcanic soot—or time itself, for all Viper knew. He didn’t move like a man who’d been buried for centuries. He moved like a pissed off god who was waking up mad at the world and found out the entire world as he knew it had changed. Each motion looked like it was steeped in power as he carved new glyphs into the floor with the heel of his palm.
Viper strained his ears, trying to hear what he was whispering, but he didn’t understand one single word. Trace’s voice echoed the rhythm beside Fionn. Viper wasn’t sure if he was repeating the words the shifter’s king was saying, but the cadence, the flow, was almost identical, as if Trace was syncing his very breath to the spell being built around them.
The light from the glyphs began to twist, spiraling up in ribbons that shimmered between gold and blue. One by one, they lifted from the rock, unfurling into the air like Fionn and Trace had yanked the stars down into the cave and snapped them into place mid-spin. The heat of it hit like a second sun, causing the temperature to spike again, and Viper’s Shemagh was soaked to the seams.
Behind him, the team stood at the ready. Reaper and Kaze had their rifles slung, but their hands twitched near the grip. Zero looked like he wanted to punch something just to feel in control. Ward, the poor bastard, hadn’t blinked in so long that his eyes had to hurt like hell.
Juice stood next to Viper, one hand on Trace’s back, the other fisted tight like he could feel every flicker of magic rattling his mate’s bones.
“What the hell are they doing?” Viper muttered.
“Building a doorway between worlds,” Juice answered without looking at him.
Of course they are.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Another deep groan echoed through the mountain—closer, lower, hungrier. Like the volcano knew their escape was near, and it wanted to taste blood before they got free. Viper exhaled slowly, his hand tightening on the grip of his SIG. If this were the end, they’d face it with their boots on. But God help whoever tried to stop them when that portal opened.
The air cracked and whipped around them. He didn’t need Juice to tell him the spell was close to completion. He felt it in his goddamn teeth. The pressure shifted all at once, like the world took a breath and held it. The light spiraling around Trace and Fionn then snapped into a vertical line, a glowing seam suspended in the air that flickered, then roared to life with a sound there were no words to describe as a portal opened.
Stargate, eat your fucking heart out.
A whirl of gold and cobalt spun like a vortex on its side, anchored to the glyphs burned into the basalt. Viper watched it ripple outward, shimmering and unstable, as if the magic itself wasn’t convinced it should hold. The air pulsed once, then twice, then steadied. He felt the shift, like gravity itself was bending to accommodate what they were doing.
Fionn straightened and stepped back, his chest rising with each breath like the weight of centuries was sliding off his back. Trace stayed crouched beside the spell work, the glow painting his sweat-slick skin in firelight. His body trembled as if his muscles were locked tight with the strain of holding the connection open.
“Fionn?” Viper asked, low and sharp.
The ancient warrior turned, his eyes gleaming like twin moons behind storm clouds on what the Irish would call a grand soft day. “It will hold. But not for long.”
It will have to be enough.
For a second, Viper hesitated, but the volcano must have felt his indecision as he bellowed in fury again.
We might die either way.
At least this way, we have a chance to live.
“Team, move,” Viper barked. “Single file, eyes up. Weapons tight. Juice, you’re first through, take Sutherland with you.” Maybe it was shitty to offer Juice up as a guinea pig, but he knew from the depths of his soul, there wasn’t a hope in hell Trace would allow his mate to go through the portal if the shifter didn’t believe it was safe for him to do so.
