The Veil breathed, rippling like black water disturbed by something vast. Darkness dense, layered, alive with currents caressing my skin with the intimacy of a hand testing the shape of a face.
I pressed my palm to it.
Shadows drew apart for me like black silk splitting along the weave.
I slid forward. There was no going back now.
Darkness swallowed my arms, my shoulders, my face. Cold—not winter cold, but the cold of deep space, between stars.
For one wild heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe. I was nowhere. Suspended in black, Coldiron singing through the void like bells in a midnight cathedral.
Then the resistance broke. Air rushed in. I stumbled, gasped, caught my balance.
Light hit—not sunlight but a reddish glow in the distance.
I was inside the DarkVeil.
Chapter 8
Caspian
An icy spear pressed into my chest. I snapped awake, rolled into a crouch, a growl tearing from my throat before my brain caught up. My wolf surged, hackles raised, every nerve shrieking.
Aelindor and Drakken moved as one. Blankets flew. Aelindor’s longsword drawn before his feet hit the ground. Drakken rose with anebony broadsword, his gray eyes flooding gold as the dragon pushed through.
“Something happened to Max,” Aelindor said quietly. When the Fae heir went quiet, it was bad. His blue eyes calculated how much violence was needed.
The tent flap ripped open.
“Cadet Max entered the DarkVeil, Highnesses!”
Spartan Corporal Enna stood in the entrance, her chest heaving, her olive face ashen. She was the same woman who’d tried to get Max drunk at the campfire two nights ago, who’d laughed when Max spat the booze. She wasn’t laughing now. Her dark eyes held fear.
Max had entered the fucking DarkVeil without us.
We were out of the tent in a breath. Drakken moved first—his bedroll closest to the entrance—with the explosive speed ofa man whose body ran on fire and fury. Aelindor was a step behind, longsword in hand. I came third, stripping my shirt, the shift pulling at my bones.
“She was on her dawn run.” Enna kept pace, words coming in sharp bursts. “Then she jogged toward the Veil and just…walked in. Commander Marco tried to follow, and Major Frost, and four others. The Veil’s sealed.” Her voice cracked. “None of them got through. Marco and Frost have burns.”
My wolf howled inside my skull. I let the shift take me, bones lengthening, muscles torn and rebuilt. My perspective dropped and widened as I fell to all fours, the world sharpening into the hyper-vivid clarity of wolf senses. Scent exploded—sulfur and the acrid bite of the Veil, the cold sweat of frightened soldiers, and underneath it all, fading but unmistakable: Max.
A dozen Spartans stood in a ragged line before the DarkVeil, the massive wall of shadow hanging over them like a tsunami frozen mid-break. One by one, they threw themselves at it. A sergeant charged shoulder-first and bounced back as if she’d hit steel, a burn blistering up her forearm. Another took a running leap and was flung ten feet backward, palms red and smoking. Frost knelt to one side, blood seeping from a gash on his temple. Marco stood beside him, pressing a burn that ran wrist to elbow. The vampire had hit the barrier three times. The burns told the rest.
No one who had entered the DarkVeil returned. Yet the Spartans still tried to go after Max out of loyalty.
I howled and charged the shifting shadow.
“Do not follow!” Aelindor barked at our men. “Guard the Veil. That is an order.”
The three of us hit the DarkVeil together.
Darkness crushed against my wolf, thick enough to have weight, cold that burned worse than fire. But we weren’t normal men. Stronger than any Spartan.
Drakken’s roar joined my howl, fire erupting from his skin, shoving the shadows back. Aelindor’s power hit next, raw force like a glacier grinding stone. I threw my wolf’s strength into the gap they tore open, claws digging into nothing, shoulders driving forward. Resistance finally splintered. We tore through.
My paws hit solid ground. Air flooded my lungs, thick and hot and tasting of sulfur and molten metal.
Max stood twenty feet ahead, back to us, her midnight-blue hair drifting upward as if gravity had reversed. She was alive. Relief hit me so hard my front legs buckled.