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“Here,” Kellin murmured. I twisted my head to see him holding out a long skein of slender, gray-brown rope. He had an obsidian shard in his other hand that looked like one of the blood-drenched ones from the beach. Lachlan was holding both my ankles now, crying silently.

“Kell. Not your…” I couldn’t make myself name what he held in his hand.

“She is everything. She is the only magic I need in this world,” Kellin said, his gaze resolute. “Take it.”

I did, my stomach churning. His pelt was almost unrecognizable. “Will it hold?”

“It’s magical. If it will reach, it will hold.”

“If it’s not enough,” Lachlan whispered, “I’ll provide more.”

I set my jaw, unable to reply. Lachlan was my blood brother and best friend. But he was also an Omega, and I’d taken a vow to protect all Omegas.

I lowered the slivered pelt down, calling to Alexios. “Grab it!”

He and the boy both tried, but it was still too short. I calculated silently. We needed twenty feet or so.

“I can cut mine as well,” Lachlan whispered.

“No,” Kellin said firmly. “Goran. Make a ladder. You at the top, holding Lachlan’s pelt. Then Lachlan holding the rope I provided. I’ll climb down and Alexios can throw the boy up to me. I’ll hold his wrists. Then Alexios can climb up with Rada.”

The volcano rumbled, taunting us.

“All right. Let’s do it.” I jammed my sword between two crags and tied myself with my own shirt to it in case the lip crumbled. Then I gripped Lachlan’s pelt tightly. “I won’t let go,” I promised.

Lachlan was tying the end of the rope on one wrist. “None of us will.” I forced myself not to watch the battle in the sky, though as Kellin descended, a loud thud reverberated under my body. I didn’t need to look to know that one dragon had fallen.

I prayed. Prayed and strained against the increasing weight on the pelt, thanking the Goddess for the years of discipline and pain that made holding on possible.

It worked. Alexios, who had tied Rada to him with some sort of sheet, fought his way over the lip to lie next to me. Then Tally climbed up, taking hold of the end of Lachlan’s pelt to help as Kellin and finally Lachlan made their way back.

We all lay gasping with effort by the end. The boy was the first to speak. “It’s like… a story from a legend. The Warlord of All Starlak, making a ladder… a ladder of warriors… to save us.”

The world stopped moving as his words sank in.

A ladder of warriors. A ladder of… The memory surged back, the only words the Goddess had ever spoken to me. “Build a ladder of warriors for her,” She’d said. A ladder of warriors would be the proof I deserved my place at her side.

“Rada,” I murmured, rolling over, my arms screaming with pain as I pushed myself up. “You need to wake up. You’re going to want to laugh at me.”

I could feel the others’ eyes on me, but I could only gaze on her. She glowed as if she was made of fire somehow… or was filled with it.

Suddenly, all my amusement fled. “Alexios, did he… Shit, let go, priest!” He had his arms wrapped around her still, and the smell of his own hair and skin burning filled my nostrils.

Instantly, Lachlan was there, using his pelt to lift her out of Alexios’s grip without harming him more. The poor Beta had burns so deep, the flesh had turned white in the centers. He panted, his chest moving quickly.

I could see bone through some of the burns in his torso. Ribs, and seared wounds too deep for healing. He was dying.

His lips moved, and I leaned close to hear. “She stabbed him.”

“Good,” I said, but he moved his head side to side jerkily.

“She marked him. Not… claimed. She needs to claim. Edan.”

He’d lost his mind. “Priest, he needs to die.”

“Seven… mates. Seven to make her whole. Her… command.” His eyes rolled back in his head, and he began to shake.

I didn’t know what to do. Rada was in Lachlan’s arms, Kellin was rolling his mutilated pelt up, and the boy was… pointing at the sky?