Page 68 of A Sunwoven Ascent

He dragged both hands down his face and let out a rough breath.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“How long have you been down here?” Evelyne called softly to the others in the dark.

For several seconds, only breathing answered her. Then a woman’s voice emerged, thin and exhausted.

“Two days,” she whispered. “They feed on others held deeper in the tunnels. We hear them.” A pause. “The screaming.”

“Only one of them ever gets brought back,” a male voice said from across the tunnel.

Evelyne turned toward the sound.

He lifted his chin slightly, nodding toward a small shape curled along the dirt wall. “And she was here before any of us.”

Evelyne hadn’t noticed her before. The girl was barely more than a shadow against the ground. Frail, filthy, and draped in what had once been a dress, now torn and hanging from her thin frame in ragged strips. Her shoulders were exposed, sleeves ripped away entirely. Hair fell in tangled knots over her face, masking her expression. She trembled in a tight curl, the kind of ceaseless shudder that belonged to a body long stripped of warmth.

“What happens to the others?” Holden asked quietly. He sounded disturbed.

“They drain them,” the woman answered, voice hollow. “Until there’s nothing left.”

Silence settled over the tunnel.

“Why bring her back?” Evelyne asked, barely more than a breath. “Why not just finish it?”

The man across from them gave a small, bitter shrug. “She’s their favorite.”

The word felt wrong in this place.

“Though it sounds like one of them may have found a new one.”

Evelyne despised the thought of being savored. Of being kept. Her blood, her body, was not theirs to feed from or share. She swallowed hard.

“Don’t worry,” Holden said firmly beside her. “We’re getting out of here.” His voice carried steel now. “I’m bringing my alpha his mate back.”

Evelyne looked again toward the girl in the corner, perhaps a young woman, though it was difficult to tell. Only then did she notice how apart she was from the others. Evelyne could feel the rest of them, hear their breathing, sense their nearness even in the dark. But the girl felt separate. Set off from everyone else. No one touched her. No one sat close.

Just as Evelyne realized she had been looking too long, the girl slowly turned over. Her back was to them now, her shoulders folding inward in quiet retreat. Something tightened painfully in Evelyne’s chest. Whatever had happened to her in this tunnel had done more than frighten her. It had hollowed her out.

“Take this,” a male voice muttered nearby.

A bundled shape landed in her lap. She unfolded it to find a large, filthy shirt. It stank of sweat, but she pulled it over her head without hesitation. The fabric hung loosely on her frame, yet it shielded her skin from the cold.

“Thank you.”

Holden did not bother asking for anything. He had spent half his life running feral beneath open skies. Modesty meant little to him now.

Evelyne forced her attention downward and bent to study the iron fastened around her ankles. The chain ran several feet before cinching around something thick and solid driven deep into the ground, something that felt almost like wood. She seized the links and pulled with all her strength. At once, the veins threaded through the metal drew tight.

It did not shift.

Several others were bound to the same anchor point. Their chains overlapped and clanked together when she tested it again.

“Perhaps,” she said through clenched teeth, “if we all pull at once—”

“We’ve tried,” a middle-aged woman interrupted gently from the darkness. “It won’t move.”

Evelyne turned toward her. In the dimness, the prisoners all looked alike—dirty, exhausted, but largely uninjured. All except the young woman curled against the wall.