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Chapter1
Kira
The scream continued to tear from my throat as the witch transported me. She released me in the new area, then vanished.
Stumbling forward, I hit the ground, panic still arcing through me like sparks through a broken wire. Wyatt was gone. Probably halfway across the island, wounded and exhausted, with Leif attacking him. That last image of the other alpha leaping toward Wyatt, his jaw gaping, etched itself in my memory. I had to get out of this stupid obstacle course as quickly as possible and find a way to save Wyatt.
I stood, then bent to brush the dirt from my pants. Had I not done that simple action, everything would have been over in an instant. No sooner had I leaned forward than a massive blade swung from left to right. A hidden mechanism had sent the huge ax head across the pathway I stood on. The blade glided past the back of my head, so close my hair fluttered as the air whooshed past me. A loud, meatythwackcame from the other side of the path, where the blade buried itself inches deep into the trunk of a palm tree.
Reflexively dropping to the ground, air burst out of me, but I managed to look up and see how close the trap had come to ending me. The crescent-shaped blade was still quivering. A wooden handle bigger than my wrist stretched back into the undergrowth, where an apparatus hummed and whirred as it tried to reload the trap. But the blade had wedged itself so deeply, it couldn’t reset itself.
There could be more of those damn things. I stayed low, crawling almost a hundred yards until I was sure I was away from any spring-loaded traps. Alone and out of danger for the moment, I had a few seconds to let what I’d seen sink in.
Leif had turned feral. He’d attacked us, attacked Wyatt. For all I knew, Wyatt was dead. My hands trembled at the very thought, and a black, gaping pit opened in my stomach. I shook my head viciously, trying to throw the idea out of my mind. Yes, Wyatt had been hurt, and yes, Leif appeared to be feral and out of his mind, but Wyatt was a trained Tranquility operative. His skills were beyond reproach. As much as I hated to admit it, he was probably on par with me. If anyone could survive a fight while injured, it was Wyatt. In a one-on-one fight between the two alphas, I would bet on Wyatt. Plus, feral or not, Leif wasnota trained fighter. Wyatt would be fine. He had to be.
Wyatt was fine. Wyatt was fine. Wyatt was fine.I held onto the thought like a pinwheel spinning around my head, the only fuel that could keep me going as I proceeded down the obstacle course.
In the distance, I heard a scream, then the howl of a wolf. Not Wyatt, someone else. It sounded like they were scared—scared or hurt. A fist clenched in my chest as I thought about the others. I couldn’t let another person die, but there was nothing I could do while stuck out here with my head on a swivel to watch out for traps.
Still, I rushed forward, crossing a foul, bubbling green stream by racing along a narrow tree trunk that had fallen across it. The path was easy to follow, and it led me to something ominous: large rock outcroppings, too tall to scale and too wide to run around, lined the trail on either side. A three-foot-wide hole at the base of the rocks looked like the only way through. It angled into the pitch-black underground, with no way for me to see what awaited inside.
“Son of a bitch.” Gods knew what was hiding down there, but I had no other choice. If I wanted to doanythingto help Wyatt, I’d need to get out of here fast.
Dropping to my knees, I gazed as far into the earthen tube as I could. The canopy above diffused the sunlight, which didn’t help me at all. The faint light only provided shadows. Huffing in irritation, I dived headfirst into the hole. My elbows quickly grew raw as I used them to pull myself along. The space was big enough for the male alpha wolves to get through, but it felt like the walls and ceiling were closing in on me. It was awkward as hell for me to get through in my human form. Obviously, we were meant to travel through this passage in our wolf forms, but Abel and I, with the shift-suppressing potion still coursing through our veins, would have a hard time. Hell, I wasalreadyhaving a hard time. After a few more yards, the tunnel arched upward, making movement more difficult as I struggled against gravity.
My toes ached from being jammed into the tips of my boots. I ignored the pain and pushed deep into the dirt to propel myself forward. I’d probably lose at least one toenail if I kept moving this way, but what the hell. Plus, the goddamned tunnel felt like it might collapse at any second. To make matters worse, I’d already come across two offshoot tunnels and had no way of knowing if I should keep going straight or take one of those.
Darkness draped me like death, and even my shifter night vision did very little to show me the way. If I took those other tunnels, I’d be totally lost. No, I had to keep going straight. The thought of crawling around under the earth for hours, lost in the darkness, induced twinges of panic.
Leaving the offshoot tunnels behind, I inched my way another hundred or so feet. A rattling hiss and a strange bird-like mewling had my every muscle tensing. The reptilian smell hit me then, making me freeze mid-crawl.
Basilisk. Fuck.
I swallowed hard and tried to glance backward, but the tunnel didn’t have enough leeway for me to see behind me. When the rasping sounds of scales on dirt reached me, I gathered all my strength and willpower and pushed forward faster.
A full-grown basilisk could kill with not only its venom but its gaze. I’d seen one days ago in the swamp challenge—a juvenile, thankfully; otherwise, several of us would have died when it slithered out of the mud. From the sounds coming from behind me, this one was huge. Like any shifter, I could heal quickly and from almost anything, but a basilisk’s venom might be enough to kill me.
With a new surge of energy, I crawled and scraped forward as quickly as my limbs allowed. Ahead of me, the pitch blackness gave way to a faint gray light illuminating the tunnel ahead. I had to be close to the exit. I dug my toes into the dirt yet again and pressed myself forward. Behind me, the rasping sounds grew louder, more insistent, as though the creature had heard or smelled me. My breath hissed in and out of my nose in spastic gasps as the sounds behind me grew closer. I could almost feel the damn thing’s breath on my feet.
“Is somebody in there?” a voice rang out from the end of the hole. Faint, but not far away.
“Help!” I screamed. my fear shoving away any pride I might have had. “Help me!”
“Kira?”
“Abel?” I recognized his voice.
“What’s wrong? Are you stuck?”
I clawed forward even faster, knowing salvation waited around the next bend in the tunnel. I just had to get there before the monster creeping along behind me reached my frantically kicking legs.
“Basilisk!” I shouted, barely able to breathe. “Keep your eyes closed, Abel! Don’t look!”
“Holy fuck, Kira, hurry!”
Ahead of me, the tunnel grew brighter, slicing through the suffocating darkness and giving me a view of the end. Abel had his arm thrust into the tunnel, fingers wiggling, beckoning me. Tingles shot through the nerves in my arm as I reached forward and clasped his hand mere seconds before a deep, stinging agony bit into my calf.
I screamed and kicked at the thing, pain and panic making it hard to think straight. The creature’s teeth dug in deeper, its fangs scraping against my bones, sending a grating feeling through my entire skeleton. The pain enveloped me, forcing the air from my lungs, not even letting me scream. The world spun around me faster and faster, and my stomach roiled. I had no idea if it was from fear or the venom.
