He nods once. "Good. Now let's get back before they think you collapsed out here."
We head back to the cottage. Cilla's pulling together breakfast from the supplies she keeps here—eggs, bacon, fresh bread. Within minutes, we're all seated around Calder's table, passing plates and pretending this is normal. Pretending I'm not a walking time bomb.
Maren sits beside me. Close enough that our shoulders touch. The contact steadies something in my chest that the corruption keeps trying to destabilize.
Sawyer launches into some story about a wildlife call gone wrong. Making Maren smile. Pulling her into the family rhythm.
My brothers are good at this. Always have been.
Beau adds his own ridiculous detail to Sawyer's story. Maren laughs, genuine and bright.
My bear rumbles with satisfaction.Clan accepts mate. Good.
But beneath the satisfaction runs calculation. The tear needs sealing. The corruption needs controlling. And I have maybe days before one problem or the other kills me.
Or worse—kills her.
The day passes in relative calm. Too calm. Like the universe is holding its breath.
Maren explores the compound with Quinn as her guide. My brothers take turns checking the perimeter, monitoring for shadow activity. Calder works in his workshop, probably building something to keep his hands busy while his mind churns through impossible problems.
I help Eli reinforce the eastern perimeter where the tear is most likely to widen. Physical work keeps the corruption from crawling too far up my mental walls. We don't talk much. Don't need to. Years of working together means we move in sync, testing the ley line flow, looking for weak points in our defenses.
By the time night falls, tension has ratcheted tight across the compound. We all feel it. The wrongness pressing against the edges of reality.
Then the alarm sounds.
The tear I came through has widened. Shadow creatures pour through in greater numbers than before. Bigger than before. The convergence point is destabilizing faster than Calder predicted. My presence here—the corruption I carry—keeps drawing them through the tear like a beacon they can't ignore.
My brothers explode from their homes. No discussion needed. We've trained for this our whole lives, even if the enemy is different than we expected.
The transformation hits me mid-run. Silvery mist swirls as my body reshapes. Bones lengthen. Muscle expands. Four paws hit the ground and I'm moving faster, stronger.
My bear form solidifies. Holds. The corruption tries to destabilize it, tries to make me flicker like before, but I force it stable through pure will.
Not now. Not when my family needs me.
Calder's massive grizzly charges forward, darker brown and built like a tank. Eli's controlled power flanks him. Beau's reddish-brown form darts between larger opponents. Sawyer's lighter bear cuts off escape routes.
We move like a unit. Years of training together. Trust built through blood and battle. Calder takes point, his alpha strength cutting through shadow matter like it's nothing. Eli covers his flank with surgical precision, every strike deliberate. Beau darts between larger opponents, faster than he looks, going for weakpoints. Sawyer cuts off retreat paths, herding the creatures toward our killing zone.
The shadows fall. Dissolve into nothing. Black ichor hisses where it hits the ground, evaporating quickly. We're winning. This is what we were born for—protecting our territory, our family, our home.
Then everything changes.
One shadow creature breaks through. Smaller than the others. Faster. It slips past Beau's guard in the chaos, finding an opening that shouldn't exist but does because we're fighting too many at once.
It streaks toward the main house.
Toward the workshop behind it.
Toward Maren.
The world goes red.
Protective rage explodes through every rational thought, every careful strategy. My bear doesn't just want to kill the threat—it wants to obliterate anything that dares target our mate. The corruption recognizes the fury, feeds it, amplifies it until I'm moving on pure instinct.
I tear through three shadow creatures to reach her. Don't remember the kills. Don't care. Just the spray of dissolving darkness, the copper taste of shadow matter on my tongue. Get to her. Protect her. Nothing else matters.
