“Your rules bow to the Alpha’s law. Or have you forgotten who sits the throne?”
More snarling. Someone’s claws scraped stone, leaving fresh gouges in walls that already bore a thousand such marks. The second Saber stepped forward, flanking her commander, while the third and fourth positioned themselves near the women—forming a protective barrier that felt increasingly inadequate against the violence brewing.
Through the bond, Elsa felt Sylas’s attention sharpen. He knew something was wrong. She could sense him moving now,his presence growing closer, anger building like dark storm clouds on the horizon. The thread between them vibrated with his fury—not just at the situation, but at the distance, at his inability to be there immediately.
Hurry,she thought, though she wasn’t sure if the thought was directed at him or at whatever resolution this standoff was hurtling toward.Something’s about to—
The alarm split the corridor like a blade.
High-pitched. Urgent. A pulse of red light strobed through the blue Moon Tear glow, painting everything in arterial colors. The sound bounced off stone walls, multiplied, became a wall of noise that made conversation impossible.
Everyone froze.
“Fallen breach.” The lead Saber’s head snapped toward the sound, all her aggression redirecting in an instant. Training taking over. “Sector twelve. That’s—”
“The eastern perimeter.” Another Saber was already moving. “Close to the civilian quarters. We need to—”
“The females.” The lead Saber turned back to Elsa, conflict clear in her amber eyes. Duty to protect versus duty to defend. The impossible math of being responsible for too many things at once. “We can’t leave them unprotected.”
“Go.” Elsa heard herself say it before she’d fully thought it through. The words came from somewhere instinctive—the part of her that understood triage, understood that the threat to many outweighed the risk to few. “The breach is more important. We’ll fall back to the upper levels.”
The Saber hesitated. Duty warring with orders. Sylas’s explicit command to protect her at all costs versus the screaming alarm that signaled something far worse than crude pit guards.
The pit guards had already forgotten the confrontation. Their attention was on the alarm, on the threat—the ancient enemythat made every other conflict trivial by comparison. Whatever the Fallen were, they terrified even these hard creatures.
“Protect the fortress,” Elsa said, putting steel into her voice. “That’s what Sabers do. Go.”
They went.
Two of them split off immediately, racing toward the source of the alarm with the fluid speed that made the Yzefrxyl so terrifying in motion. The lead Saber barked orders at the third, something about securing the corridor junction, and then she was moving too, her massive frame disappearing into the strobe-lit darkness.
The fourth Saber stayed, but Elsa could see the conflict in every line of her body. “I’ll escort you back to—”
Another alarm. Closer this time. Louder. The Saber’s ears pinned flat against her skull.
“Go,” Mia said, her voice surprisingly steady. “We know the way. We’ll be fine.”
She didn’t want to. Elsa could see it in the rigid set of her shoulders, the way her claws flexed against the stone floor. But the alarm was screaming and her team were already gone and somewhere in this fortress, something dark and ancient was trying to break through.
“Stay together,” she ordered. “Move fast. Don’t stop for anything.”
Then she was gone too, disappearing up the corridor with the speed of the desperate.
The corridor fell silent except for the wail of alarms and the thunder of Elsa’s heartbeat.
The pit guards had vanished. When? She hadn’t seen them leave—one moment they’d been snarling at the Sabers, and the next they were simply...not there. The iron gate stood unguarded. The torches guttered in some draft Elsa couldn’t feel.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
“We need to move.” Ari grabbed Elsa’s arm, her fingers digging in hard. “Now. Before—”
She never finished the sentence.
A hand clamped over Elsa’s mouth from behind.
Massive. Clawed. Smelling of iron and old violence and something chemical that made her vision blur at the edges. The grip was absolute—no leverage, no escape, just crushing pressure against her face and a body behind hers that felt like a wall of fur, muscle, and malice.
She thrashed. Her scream died against the palm pressed to her lips. Somewhere to her left, Mia’s gasp cut off mid-sound—a choked, abbreviated noise of terror. Somewhere behind her, Ari’s shout died in her throat before it fully formed.