"Probably." He doesn't move. "In a minute."
We doze. Wake. Touch each other lazily. Voices outside pull us back to reality. Through the window I watch Jonah's brothers setting up torches in a clearing behind the cottage. Calder directs positioning with sharp commands. Eli carries bundles of dried herbs. Sawyer spreads a ceremonial cloth on the ground.
Curled against Jonah in the warm haze after, I feel his breathing change before he speaks.
“When Calder pulled me aside this morning,” he says quietly. “he indicated the corruption is spreading faster. It feels like we’re running out of time.”
His words settle over us. I tighten my arm around him, the urgency threading into the quiet of our bed, impossible to ignore now that he’s voiced it. His hands frame my face, eyes searching mine.
"Still sure?"
My hand presses against his chest, feeling his heartbeat thunder beneath my palm.
"We do this. Tonight."
Through the bond I feel his satisfaction blaze into certainty.
A few hours until dusk. Hours until everything changes.
The ley lines hum beneath my feet. Hungry. Waiting.
CHAPTER 6
JONAH
Choosing between impossible options is easy when only one of them gets me what I want.
The moment I step out of my cabin with Maren at my side, the air feels charged, thick with expectation and the kind of tension that settles deep in my bones. Calder and my brothers stand in a tight circle within the ring of standing stones just outside the compound, the torches set among the stones casting flickering shadows across their faces. They’ve been waiting for me. For us.
Calder doesn’t waste time.
A deeper current moves through the ring of stones, the kind that makes the earth itself seem to draw a slow breath beneath our feet. The torches crackle in a steady rhythm, their flames bending toward the center of the circle as if drawn by the same energy gathering around us. The energy from the stones presses against my skin, a low thrum that crawls up my spine. Maren feels it too—I can tell by the way her breath stutters, a soft intake pulled from somewhere low and unguarded and the faint tremor in her fingers before she curls them into a fist.
. "Jonah. Maren. We need to begin. Now." His gaze sweeps over the clearing, his expression grim and unyielding. "The leylines are unstable. They’re beginning to fracture in multiple locations. More tears are forming, smaller ones, but they’re multiplying. The creatures coming through them aren’t random anymore. They’re coordinated. Learning."
A chill that has nothing to do with corruption or the evening breeze off the Pacific slides down my spine.
Eli steps forward, jaw tight. "We’re tracking six new micro-rifts. One opened near the western ridge ten minutes ago. Closed on its own, but not before something came through. Sawyer caught a glimpse of it. Bigger than the others. Faster."
Sawyer nods once. "And it didn’t look confused when it crossed over. It moved with purpose." He meets my eye. "They’re hunting you. More aggressively than before."
That's not unexpected. What I didn’t expect was the timeline Calder gives next.
"We have days." He looks at me, and for the first time since I’ve known him, genuine fear flashes in his gaze. "If the ley network collapses, the Shadow Realm doesn’t just leak through, it floods. Everything, this land, our clan, our people, will be consumed."
Maren sucks in a breath beside me. I feel her hand twitch toward mine, but she keeps it at her side, steady and silent.
"Two options," Calder continues. "Neither safe. One: the mating ritual. Bonding. It stabilizes you, strengthens your connection to the ley lines, and gives us a chance, just a chance, of purging the corruption."
Beau’s expression darkens. "Or it kills you both."
Calder nods grimly. "The other option is sacrifice. You go back into the Shadow Realm and seal the tears from the inside." His voice tightens as he says it. "Doing that would cut off every breach at the source, but you wouldn’t come back."
Maren stiffens beside me, instinct spiking hard in my chest. I angle my body slightly, shielding her even though no one here is a threat.
"We’re not doing that," I say.
Sawyer looks torn between relief and worry. "Jonah, if the bond doesn’t work,"
