The path spat us out onto the Three Sisters Ridge like it was glad to be rid of us. Wind screamed across the bare rock, sharp enough to flay skin. The ridge was nothing more than a knife-edge of stone between two abysses, crowned by three crooked pines that looked like old women bent in prayer. Below us, Valen's stronghold crouched inside a bowl of cliffs, lit by torches that spat red against the night.
I could smell Leo from here. Faint, terrified, alive.
Ryan dropped to one knee, Elias cradled in his arms. The King's breathing had turned wet and rattling; silver poisoning was winning. We had minutes, not hours.
"There." Ryan jerked his chin toward a narrow crevice split into the eastern face, barely wide enough for a man. Wind howled through it like a warning. He crawled inside first, laid Elias down on the only patch of flat stone, and pressed the emergency blanket over him. I caught his wrist before he pulled away.
"If we don't come back—"
"We will." His voice was iron.
I kissed Elias's forehead, tasting salt and fever. "Hold on, Father. Your grandson needs you to be stubborn a little longer."
Then we were moving.
The stronghold's outer wall rose thirty feet of black stone laced with silver runes. The Blood Ward shimmered over it like heat haze, sickly red. I uncorked the vial with my teeth. The liquid inside pulsed, eager.
Ryan planted himself at my back, claws out, eyes scanning the darkness. "Clock starts the second it breaks. No hesitation."
I tipped three drops onto the nearest ward stone. They hissed where they touched.
"Valen Blackwood," I said, clear and cold.
The ward detonated.
A sound like a thousand glass panes shattering at once tore through the mountain. Red light exploded outward, knocking me to my knees. The runes died in a shower of sparks. For one heartbeat everything was silent.
Then the howling started.
Ryan grabbed my arm and hauled me through the breach. The courtyard inside was chaos—rogues spilling from barracks, blades already drawn, eyes wild with shock. They had expected weeks of siege, not this.
We gave them no time to think.
The first guard lunged at me with a silver-tipped spear. I caught the shaft, twisted, and drove it through his throat with his own momentum. Ryan was already past me, a blur of claws and teeth. He took two more down before they cleared leather.
I used the Voice for the first time in what felt like years. It rolled out of me like thunder.
"Kneel."
Half the courtyard dropped, skulls cracking against stone. The rest hesitated just long enough for Ryan to rip through them. Blood painted the walls, hot and thick. I tasted it on every breath.
We moved deeper. Corridors of carved stone, torches guttering in brackets shaped like screaming wolves. Every guard we met died fast. Ryan fought like a storm given flesh—strategic, brutal, beautiful. I fought like the mother I was: no mercy, no pause, only forward.
A iron-banded door barred the lowest level. Two elite rogues stood guard, bigger than the rest, eyes glowing with Valen's stolen Alpha power. Ryan took the left. I took the right.
We hit them together.
My claws punched through armor and breastbone. Ryan's jaws closed on the second rogue's spine and wrenched. The door behind them hung open on broken hinges.
The smell hit me first—fear and little-boy sweat and the faint sweetness of the wooden wolf toy.
Leo.
He was curled in the far corner of a cell barely big enough for a dog, knees drawn to his chest, silver manacles around his wrists. When the torchlight fell across his face he flinched, then froze.
His lips formed one trembling word. "Mommy?"
Everything inside me shattered and reformed in the space of a heartbeat.
I was across the cell before I felt my feet move. The manacles burned my palms, but I ripped them apart like paper. Leo launched himself into my arms with a sob that tore my heart clean out of my chest.
I buried my face in his hair. He smelled exactly the same—like pine needles and warm milk and home. His small body shook so hard I thought he would break.
"I've got you," I whispered against his curls. "I've got you, baby. Never again."
Ryan dropped to his knees beside us, one massive hand cupping the back of Leo's head. His voice came out cracked and raw. "Hey, little wolf."
Leo turned and saw him. For a second he went very still, then flung one arm around Ryan's neck too, clinging to both of us like we were the only solid things left in the world. Ryan's eyes met mine over our son's head. They were wet.
I wanted to stay there forever, breathing them in, but the mountain was waking up. Boots thundered overhead. Shouts echoed down stairwells. The one-hour clock was bleeding out.
"We have to move," Ryan said.
He lifted Leo against his chest without asking. Our son wrapped legs and arms around him like a monkey and refused to let go. I took point, claws dripping, and we ran.
The corridors were filling with soldiers now—Valen's real guard, not hired rogues. We carved a path. Blood slicked the floors. I used the Voice twice more, shattering knees and minds. Ryan never set Leo down, shielding him with his body, taking blows meant for both of them.
We burst into the courtyard just as the broken ward began to knit itself back together. Red light flickered across the breach, sealing, healing. Beyond it I could see moonlight on the ridge path—freedom, thirty seconds away.
A new horn sounded, deeper, older. Valen's personal banner was rising on the eastern tower. His main force had arrived.
We were out of time.
Ryan looked at the closing ward, at the flood of armored wolves pouring through side gates, then at me. His eyes said everything his mouth didn't have time for.
I nodded once.
He shifted Leo higher on his hip, pressed a fast kiss to the top of our son's head, and snarled at the oncoming army.
The ward flared, almost solid now, a wall of crimson fire.
We had maybe ten seconds before it sealed forever and trapped us inside with Valen's entire host.
I grabbed Ryan's arm. "Together."
He bared blood-slick teeth in something that might have been a smile.
"Always."
We ran straight at the closing breach, Leo screaming between us, the mountain roaring behind.
The red light swallowed us whole.