Zane POV
The feelings hit me like a tidal wave the moment we entered the forest.
Fear. Pain. Desperation. But not just from my brothers running beside me. Every living thing in these woods was terrified, and their panic was flooding through my mind powers like a scream I couldn't turn off.
Something was very, very wrong here.
My wolf form crashed through the underbrush, following Iris's smell trail deeper into the mountains. Kieran and Asher flanked me, their own wolves driven by the same desperate need to reach our mate.
But the feelings I was picking up weren't just from forest animals anymore. There were other minds out here. Ancient minds that felt like ice and hunger and endless night.
The Shadow Beasts were real, and they were hunting.
Focus, I told myself, pushing deeper into the mental link I shared with Iris through our mate bond. The link was getting weaker with every step, which meant either she was successfully breaking it or... No. I wouldn't think about that.
Through the fading bond, I caught flashes of what she was feeling. Pain that felt like her soul was being torn apart. Silver light burning behind her eyes. And underneath it all, a desperate love for people she was willing to die to protect.
Stupid, brave, beautiful girl, my wolf whined.
A new smell hit my nose, stopping me dead in my tracks. Kieran and Asher skidded to a stop beside me, their hackles rising.
Blood. Fresh blood, but not monster blood.
Something else entirely.
I shifted back to human form, my brothers doing the same. "Do you smell that?" I whispered.
"What died out here?" Asher asked grimly.
But before anyone could answer, my mind powers caught something that made my blood freeze. Emotions that weren't emotions. Thoughts that weren't thoughts. A hungry mind that was older than the mountains themselves.
"We're not alone," I breathed.
The forest around us went totally silent. No bird songs, no bug buzzes, even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Then the shadows started moving.
They peeled away from the trees like living things, moving across the ground toward us with unnatural speed. My mind tried to read them, to understand what they were, but touching their consciousness was like sticking my hand in freezing acid.
Pure hunger. That's all they were. Endless, ancient hunger.
"Shadow Beasts," Kieran growled, shifting back to wolf form.
"How many?" Asher asked, his own wolf emerging.
I tried to count the minds pressing against my awareness, but they moved like liquid darkness, impossible to pin down. "Too many. Way too many."
The first one lunged from behind a huge oak tree. It looked like a wolf made of living shadow, with eyes that burned like red coals and teeth that seemed to absorb light. Kieran met its attack head-on, his golden wolf clashing with the darkness in an explosion of snarls and snapping jaws.
But when his teeth should have found flesh, they passed through the thing like it was made of smoke.
The Shadow Beast reformed quickly and raked claws across Kieran's side, leaving deep, bleeding gouges that hissed and steamed.
"They're not fully physical!" I shouted, ducking as another beast flowed toward me. "They can choose when to be solid!"
More creatures poured from the forest around us. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. My mind powers were going haywire trying to handle so many alien consciousnesses at once.
Through the chaos, I felt a spike of pain from Iris. The mate bond flickered like a candle in a hurricane, and I realized with horror that she was close to succeeding in breaking our link.
"We have to get to her now!" I yelled over the sounds of fighting.
Asher was dancing around three Shadow Beasts, using his speed to avoid their attacks while scoring quick strikes whenever they solidified. "Kind of busy here!"
A new scent cut through the smell of blood and shadow-magic. Viktor Shadowmoon's pack. They were almost at the borders now, drawn by the magical chaos Iris's ritual was causing.
But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was what I sensed in Viktor's mind when my powers accidentally touched it from this distance. He wasn't going to negotiate. He wasn't even going to take Iris alive.
He was going to drain her blood tonight, under the full moon, and become ageless.
"The ritual!" I gasped, avoiding another shadow-claw. "Iris doesn't know what she's really doing!"
Through our weakening link, I could feel her confusion and pain. She thought she was just breaking mate bonds to protect the pack. She had no idea that the blood moon overhead was turning her power into something else entirely.
Something that would call every supernatural attacker in a hundred-mile radius straight to her.
I reached out with my mind, trying to warn her through our link. But the Shadow Beasts felt what I was doing and attacked my mental defenses directly.
Pain exploded through my skull as alien thoughts crashed into my mind. Images of ancient hunts, of Silver Wolves consumed and devoured, of power stolen and hoarded in the darkness between worlds.
I fell to my knees, holding my head and screaming.
"Zane!" Kieran's voice seemed to come from very far away.
Through the pain, I felt something else. A new presence in the forest, moving toward Iris's spot with deadly purpose.
Not Viktor. Not the Shadow Beasts.
Something worse.
"The Void Walker," I gasped, the words tearing from my throat like broken glass. "It's here. The thing that hunts Silver Wolves across worlds. Iris's ritual opened a door."
Asher and Kieran were suddenly beside me, pulling me to my feet even as Shadow Beasts ringed us like sharks.
"What are you talking about?" Asher demanded.
"Ancient enemy," I choked out, trying to stay conscious as the creature's presence pressed against my mind. "Follows Silver Wolf families across worlds. Feeds on pure magic. It's been waiting for someone like Iris to—"
The mate bond suddenly snapped.
All three of us staggered as the link to Iris severed completely, leaving a gaping hole in our consciousness where she used to be.
"No!" Kieran howled, the sound echoing through the trees like a death cry.
But I could still feel her with my mind powers, and what I felt made my blood turn to ice.
Iris thought she had succeeded in breaking the ties to protect us. She thought she was free to sacrifice herself to Viktor without hurting anyone else.
She had no idea that breaking the mate ties hadn't made her weaker.
It had made her infinitely more powerful.
And infinitely more valuable to the monsters now racing toward her position.
"We have to move," I said quickly, pushing away the Shadow Beasts' mental attacks. "Now. Before—"
A roar shattered the night, coming from the direction of Iris's ceremony site. But it wasn't a werewolf roar, or even a Shadow Beast cry.
It was the sound of something breaking through from another world.
The Void Walker had arrived.
And from the fear flooding through every supernatural mind in the forest, I knew that when it was done with Iris, it would come for the rest of us.
Starting with her old mates.
"Run," I muttered, then louder as the truth hit me. "RUN!"
But as we ran through the shadow-filled forest toward our mate, I realized we weren't running to save her anymore.
We were running toward our own deaths.
And the worst part was, even without the mate bond, I knew Iris would try to save us.
Even if it meant letting the monster destroy her first.