Then he looked at Fallon. The omega’s face was pale with concentration, his dark eyes already tracking the ward structure with analytical precision. “The outer layer is Cladhaire’s. I recognize his signature. It’s the same magic he used on the castle.”
“And underneath?”
“Murphy reinforcement. Colin’s work, probably. It’s nasty—designed to punish anyone who tries to break through. Pain spells woven into the ward fabric.”
“Can you break it?”
Fallon looked at him, and something fierce and certain burned behind his eyes. “We can break anything he’s built. We have the White Dragon.”
Gods, Gregor loved his confidence.
Fallon met Erwan’s eyes. “Ready?”
Erwan nodded, his magic already gathering around him like a visible aura. “I’ll channel the clan. You attack.”
They moved into position—Erwan and Fallon at the center, wolves fanning out on either side, Valdis and the other fighters ready to exploit any breach. Gregor stood behind Erwan, every muscle coiled, every sense focused on the property ahead and the knowledge that Fergal was inside. He couldn’t feel him, but he knew.
So close. After days of silence and distance and the suffocating absence of the connection, Fergal was right there, maybe three hundred yards away, behind walls and wards and locked doors and armed guards. And between Gregor and his mate stood every obstacle the Murphys and Cladhaire could construct.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Now,” Fallon said, and the assault began.
The White Dragon’s power hit the wards like a tsunami against a seawall. Gregor felt the impact through the ground—a shockwave of pure magical force that made the air vibrate and the grass flatten in a radial pattern around them. Fallon channeled alongside him, drawing power from every member of the True Doyle clan, from Jermon hundreds of miles north, from the dragons at the pack lands, from the network of bonds that Erwan’s White Dragon magic had woven into something greater than the sum of its parts.
The wards screamed. There was no other word for it. The dark magic Cladhaire and Colin had layered into the defenses resisted with a sound that existed on the edge of hearing, a shriek of corrupted power fighting against the clean, burning force of the White Dragon’s fire.
Lidon stepped forward. The True Alpha’s wolf planted himself beside Erwan, and the power that flowed from him was different from the dragon magic—older, deeper, rooted insomething primal that predated clans and codes and the petty politics of men. The ward structure buckled where the two powers intersected, dark magic crumbling under the combined assault of the most powerful dragon and the most powerful wolf alive.
The pain spells lashed back. A wolf alpha to Gregor’s left went down with a cry, involuntarily shifting back and clutching his head. Fallon staggered, blood trickling from his nose as the dark magic fought for every inch. Erwan’s jaw clenched, his hands shaking with the effort of sustaining the assault against defenses Cladhaire had spent years fortifying.
But they were winning. Gregor could see the wards fracturing, fissures spreading through the magical barrier like cracks in ice, dark energy bleeding from the wounds in wisps of oily smoke. Cladhaire’s foundation was crumbling under the White Dragon’s fire, and Colin’s reinforcements, stripped of their anchor, were collapsing on top of it.
One more push. Erwan roared, a release of power so intense it was visible, a white flare in the early morning sun, and the wards shattered.
The explosion of released energy knocked everyone back a step. Gregor caught himself, his fighter’s balance compensating automatically, and then he was running before the debris had finished falling. Behind him, he heard the others surge forward—wolves howling, dragons spewing fire, the sound of combat beginning as the Murphy defenders poured out of the buildings to meet them.
He didn’t look back. The battle behind him was in capable hands—Lidon and the wolf alphas could handle the ground fight, Valdis was already engaging with fire, and Fallon was providing magical suppression that would neutralize Colin’s dark magic. Gregor’s team knew their roles. They didn’t need him for the general assault.
They needed him for one thing, and that thing was inside the farmhouse. He could feel him now, faintly butthere, and the realization almost brought him to his knees. Fergal was close. His mate was waiting for him.
The front door was reinforced—steel behind the wood, bolted from the inside. Gregor didn’t slow down. He hit it at full sprint with his shoulder, channeling his dragon’s strength into the impact, and the door didn’t open so much as cease to exist, the frame splintering outward in a shower of wood and metal that scattered down the hallway beyond.
Two guards inside. Both armed, both turning toward the noise, both too slow. Gregor was on the first one before the man’s hand reached his weapon, a strike to the throat that dropped him choking to the floor. The second guard managed to raise a gun, and Gregor broke his wrist with a precision that came from centuries of practice, caught the falling weapon, and used the guard’s own momentum to slam him into the wall. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Three seconds. Two men down. Gregor kept moving.
The farmhouse was larger than it looked from outside—corridors branching left and right, doors on both sides, the layout of a building that had been modified and expanded over time without regard for architectural coherence. Under normal circumstances, he’d have cleared each room systematically, ensuring no threats were left behind him.
These were not normal circumstances. The mate bond burned brighter, stronger at the center of his consciousness, pulling him deeper into the building with a force that overrode three and a half centuries of tactical training. Fergal was ahead of him. Down the central corridor, then left, then—he didn’t know how he knew this—through a door and down a flight of stairs.
He encountered three more guards on the way. None of them lasted more than two seconds. Gregor moved through them like a force of nature. A fist to the jaw. An elbow to the temple. A throw that ended with a body hitting a wall hard enough to crack the plaster. He took a hit—a punch that connected with his ribs and would hurt later but barely registered now because the bond was screamingcloser, closer, almost there.
The stairs led down to a basement level—a corridor with doors on both sides, each one reinforced with the same magical sealing he’d felt on the wards outside. Cells. He was in the prison section of the compound, and Fergal was?—
There. Right there. Behind the third door on the left.
A figure stepped into the corridor ahead of him. Two figures. Cladhaire and Baoth, positioned between Gregor and the cells like a last line of defense. The old king’s hands crackled with dark magic, his face twisted with a fury that had been building since the Dragon Council stripped him of everything he’d stolen.
