The entire chamber lurched violently.Cracks exploded across the massive circular platforms surrounding the abyss, jagged white lines racing outward like spider legs scrambling in every direction at once.Troll warriors shouted in their harsh language, their voices breaking apart against the rumble.Silver-gold light surged wildly through the fractures below, no longer pulsing in rhythm but thrashing, beating itself bloody against the dark like something wounded beneath the roots of the realms.
Dust thundered from the unseen ceiling overhead, falling in slow, heavy curtains that turned the air gritty against Nick’s tongue.
The black corruption spread faster now.No longer creeping.Hunting.
It shot through the fractured seams between the glowing foundation lines in jagged bursts, devouring silver light as it climbed upward toward the outer ledges, leaving smoking streaks of nothing in its wake.
Nick’s wolf slammed against his skin hard enough to ache.Danger.Mate.Protect.
“Kara.”His voice came out as a low growl he barely recognized as his own.
Her fingers dug into his forearm as another violent tremor shook the chamber, her nails biting through the fabric of his sleeve.“I noticed,” she snapped through clenched teeth, head tipping back to glare up at him.“Slightly hard to miss the apocalypse.”
The sarcasm would have reassured him more if her face had not gone pale beneath the flickering foundation light, the freckles across her nose suddenly sharp against skin gone the color of old parchment.
Verna appeared beside them seemingly out of nowhere, the hem of her cloak catching the light, her ancient eyes fixed not on the collapsing chamber, not on the shrieking creatures, not on the splitting stone.
But on Kara.
“It begins,” the elder female whispered.
Nick’s entire body locked.“No.”
Kara blinked rapidly, looking between them.“No to what?”
Then pain hit her.He felt it at the same time he watched it happen.
One second she stood upright, tense but steady, one hand braced on his chest.The next, her entire body folded around a sharp cry she clearly tried to bite back, her shoulders curling inward, her breath shoving out of her in a single broken sound.
Terror unlike anything Nick had ever known ripped through him, cold and electric, racing down his spine and pooling in his hands.
“Kara!”
Her hand flew to the underside of her stomach as she doubled forward against him, breathing hard through clenched teeth, forehead pressed against the center of his chest.“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
Verna’s expression sharpened instantly, every weathered line in her face hardening into purpose.“How far apart?”
Kara turned her head just enough to stare at her in disbelief, sweat already beading at her hairline.“I don't know, for several reasons–the first being that I haven’t gotten to this part of the pregnancy book because I’m not supposed to be to this part yet, the second being that I was sort of distracted by the rotting supernatural root thingies, and the third being that I wasn’t timing the contractions because I was slightly distracted by reality collapsing.”
Another quake split through the foundations beneath them.The stone bucked once, twice, and then a section of the outer ledge gave way completely, crashing into the abyss below in an explosion of shattered stone and shrieking dust.
Troll warriors roared warnings, their voices overlapping in a wall of sound.
The corruption surged higher, oil-black tendrils licking up over the broken edge.
And deep beneath the chamber, something answered it.
The sound rolled upward through the foundations like a giant exhaling beneath the roots of existence itself, low and slow and unbearably patient.It was not loud.It did not need to be.It was felt in the bone, in the teeth, in the place behind the heart where instinct lived.
Every troll in the chamber froze.
Torvik whimpered somewhere behind Wadim, the sound small and high and entirely too young.
Aphid muttered something that sounded deeply profane in at least three languages, his hands lighting with silver fae magic before the curse had finished leaving his mouth.
Nick barely heard any of it.
His world had narrowed to Kara, to her breathing, ragged and uneven against his chest.To the pain tightening her fingers against his arm until he could feel the press of every individual fingertip.To the scent of fear beginning to sharpen beneath everything else, threading through the familiar warmth of her skin.
