My brothers converge on me, checking me over with the efficiency of people who spent six months looking for me after I disappeared. Calder grips my shoulder once more, his alpha energy settling now that he's confirmed I'm whole. Beau clapsme on the back hard enough to make me stumble. Sawyer just grins, the tension finally draining from his face.
"Your bear?" Eli asks quietly.
"Stable. Whole. The corruption's gone." I glance at Maren. "The mate bond burned it away."
"Show us," Calder says. It's not quite an order, but close. The alpha checking his brother's recovery, making sure the threat is truly past.
I pull off clothes and shift without hesitation. The mist rises and falls, and my bear stands where the man was. Whole. Dark. Present.
No flickering. No translucence. No shadow realm trying to drag me back.
My brothers make sounds of approval. The tension finally drains from their shoulders, the worry leaving their faces. Calder shifts too, his massive bear appearing in a swirl of silver mist. He circles me once, scenting, checking, confirming what he needs to know. Then we shift back, pulling on clothes. The satisfaction is clear on his face.
"You're really here," he says.
"I'm really here… not planning to go anywhere."
"Good." Calder's expression changes, the satisfaction giving way to something darker. Something that makes my newly healed instincts snap to attention. "Because we've got a problem."
The celebratory mood shatters. My brothers go still, reading Calder's tone the way we've learned to over decades. When he uses that tone of voice, something's seriously wrong.
"What kind of problem?" I ask, though dread already tightens my chest.
"The ceremony disrupted the ley lines." Calder's voice is grim, carrying the weight of bad news he doesn't want to deliver. "The power surge from the mate bond, the transformation—it was more energy than the network could absorb cleanly. We knew there'd be ripples, but this—" He shakes his head. "The main tear in the north is expanding. Rapidly."
The world seems to tilt. "How rapidly?"
"I've been monitoring it since dawn." Calder pulls out his phone, shows us a series of readings. Numbers that mean nothing to me but everything to him as the ley line guardian. "It's grown twelve feet in the last hour. At this rate?—"
"How long?" Eli interrupts, his voice sharp.
Calder meets his eyes. "Hours. Maybe less. The shadow realm is breaking through."
The words land like physical blows. I'm aware of every breath, every heartbeat, every second ticking past. Hours. After six months of fighting to get home, after finally being healed, after bonding with Maren—we have hours before everything I escaped from comes pouring into Redwood Rise.
"Can we evacuate?" Eli asks. "Get the non-combatants out, at least?—"
"There's no time." Calder's jaw is tight. "And even if we could evacuate, where would they go? The shadow realm doesn't respect town boundaries. Once it breaks through here, it'll spread. Could consume the entire region within days."
"So we fight," Sawyer says flatly.
"We can't fight the shadow realm itself." I force the words out past the dread choking me. "You can kill individual shadow creatures, but the realm is infinite. It would just keep sending more. Thousands. Millions. Until there's nothing left but darkness."
Maren moves to my side, her hand finding mine. Fear spikes along the mate bond, but also her determination. "What does that mean?"
"It means the shadows I spent six months trapped with are coming here." I squeeze her hand. "All of them. Everything thatexists in that realm—it's going to pour through into our world unless we seal the tear."
"Can we seal it?" Beau asks.
Calder's jaw tightens. "Theoretically. The ley line guardians have protocols for this kind of breach. But it requires massive amounts of focused energy, channeled directly into the tear. And someone has to go into the shadow realm itself to anchor the seal from the other side."
The silence that follows is absolute.
"No." Maren's voice cuts through the quiet. "Jonah just escaped from there. He's not going back."
"We don't have a choice," Calder says. "If we don't seal it?—"
"Then I'll go." Eli steps forward. "I'll anchor the seal."
