Through the bond, he felt her exhaustion like a weight dragging at his own limbs. Felt her pain pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Felt the tremor in her muscles as she fought to stay upright.
And beneath it all, he felt herrelief. Not simple gratitude—something more complicated than that, threaded through with fierceness and a thing that tasted like trust. The bond didn’t lie. She’d believed he would come, and he had, and whatever that meant between them was still being written.
“Can you walk?” His hand cupped her uninjured cheek. Gentle. Careful. So careful, when everything in him wanted to gather her up and never let go.
“Can you stop asking stupid questions?” She leaned into his palm. Just for a second. Just long enough for the bond to sing with relief, with want, with something that might have been the beginning of trust.
“Rowan and Milo.” Her voice sharpened. “They’re in the pits. Level three. I told them—when they hear the second alarm—”
“The riot.” Sylas understood. “You planned this.”
“I planned a distraction. Vask turned it into a weapon.” She glanced at the body on the floor without flinching. “At least that’s handled.” She pulled back from his hand, and he let her go even though it cost him. “We can’t leave them.”
“We won’t.” Sylas looked at Vor. “The pit levels—can you track the other humans?”
“If they’re moving, I can find them.”
“Then find them. Get them to the secondary extraction point. Keth, take the females up through the maintenance shafts.” Sylas turned to Elsa. “You go with Keth.”
Her chin lifted. “And you?”
“I go to the pits.” He held her gaze. “I chose you over the grid. The witnesses saw. The political damage is done.” His mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Might as well make it count for something.”
For a long moment, Elsa just looked at him. The blood on her face. The exhaustion in her frame. The defiance that hadn’t broken despite everything Vask had done to shatter it.
“Don’t die,” she said finally. “I didn’t survive three days in that hole just to watch you get killed being dramatic.”
“I’ll try to contain my dramatics.”
He turned before he could do something foolish like kiss her. Before he could let the bond pull him under and forget that there was still a riot to suppress, still a political nightmare to contain, still an entire faction that had just watched their Alpha King prove every accusation they’d been whispering for weeks.
Keth moved the females toward the maintenance shaft access. Vor disappeared into the tunnels toward the pit levels. One Saber remained with Vask’s body—the council would want proof. Let them see what remained of the priest who had dared touch the Alpha King’s mate.
“Tell your witnesses,” he said quietly, “that what they saw tonight was a king choosing his mate. Tell them it’s the most Yzefrxyl thing I’ve done since taking the throne. And tell them—” He crouched, bringing his face level with Vask’s. “Tell them that if anyone else touches her again, what I do to them will make tonight look merciful.”
He rose. Walked toward the pit access. Let the alarms guide him toward the chaos that Vask had manufactured and Elsa had turned into opportunity.
The pit levels sprawled beneath him—a maze of labor corridors and processing chambers where the fortress’s dirty work happened out of sight.
Behind him, in the shadows where the council witnesses had gathered to watch their Alpha King fail, Sylas heard the whispers beginning.
Compromised. Feral. Unfit.
The words drifted through the tunnels like poison. He heard them without listening, cataloged them without caring. They would gather their evidence. They would sharpen their accusations. They would prepare whatever political assault they thought would unseat a king who had ruled for four decades.
Let them try.
Let them whisper. Let them gather their evidence and sharpen their accusations and prepare whatever political assault they thought would unseat him. He’d been Alpha King for fifteen years. He knew how coups worked.
He also knew, with a certainty that settled in his bones like bedrock, that Elsa was worth whatever came next.
The bond hummed in his chest—restored, singing, alive with her presence even as distance grew between them. Through it, he felt her moving upward. Felt her pain, her exhaustion, her fierce refusal to stop fighting.
Felt, beneath it all, something that might have been the beginning ofherchoosinghim.
Sylas descended into the pits, and the dark swallowed him whole.
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