Chapter 149 Primal terms

Chapter 149 Primal terms
OPHELIAS POV

The voice hits every bond at once.

It slides into my head like ice water clear, calm, and impossible to shut out. Around me, I feel the exact same shock ripple through Kai, through Seraphina, through every single wolf still standing in the catacombs. Somewhere above us in the pack house, I know that same dark voice is speaking to all of them at the exact same second.

Deliver Ophelia and the child to the Blackwood Citadel by the next full moon.

Morwen voice is soft. Almost gentle. That only makes it a thousand times worse.

œIf you refuse, I will activate the latent serum in every allied wolf. They will become mine. Black-eyed. Obedient. Gone.

My stomach drops so hard I nearly double over. The air in the chamber suddenly feels suffocatingly thin. My fingers tighten violently around Luna before I force myself to loosen them, terrified of hurting her.

Kai moves before I can even open my mouth.

His arms lock around me from behind”one hauled across my chest, the other braced protectively over Luna where she sleeps soundly against me. The scorching heat of his body soaks straight through my clothes. His heart is slamming against my back so hard I can feel every frantic beat against my spine.

Over my dead body,he snarls at the empty air, his voice vibrating with absolute fury. You hear me? I will burn every single forest between here and that citadel before I let you lay a finger on them!

The mate bond between us flares red-hot. Protective. Possessive. Raw. I feel his rage and his blinding fear twisted so tightly together that I cant tell where his emotions end and mine begin. My own pulse answers it, racing wildly under my skin.

My hands won't stop shaking.

Horrible visions rush behind my eyes. Faces I love. Cassie standing in the courtyard the morning we left. The young warriors who still look at me like I might actually have answers. The elders who only recently stopped calling me a mistake. All of them are carrying that same toxic serum in their blood a serum Morwen can now flip like a switch.

If I refuse, they die as puppet shadows of themselves. If I go, I might never come back.

And Luna

I look down at the top of her little head. She is still fast asleep, small, warm, and completely unaware that an ancient monster just put a death mark on both our lives.

Kai,I whisper, my throat tight.

No. His arms tighten around us like steel bands. We re not discussing it

Kai, she’ss not bluffing

I dont care!

I turn within his hold so I can force him to look at me. His eyes are glowing a pure, dangerous gold, his sharp jaw locked so tight the muscle keeps jumping. I can smell the sharp edge of his anger mixed with the colder, bitter scent of fear he is desperately trying to hide. I want to believe we can fight our way out of this that we can rip our enemies apart the way we always have. But the suffocating weight sitting on my chest says otherwise.

You felt it the exact same way I did, I say, my voice cracking. She wasnt threatening us. She was stating a cold, hard fact.

Kai’s broad hands flex against my sides.Then we hunt her down and kill her before the full moon.

And if we fail?

He doesn't answer. He just glares at me, his chest heaving.

Eve has been completely silent until now.

She’s standing near the open chamber wall, one hand pressed tightly to the jagged old scar along her ribs, as if the phantom pain has flared back to life. Her face is ghostly pale. When she finally breaks the silence, her voice is quieter, darker than usual.

I know how to get in.

Every head in the catacombs snaps toward her.

Eve swallows hard, her throat bobbing.When the Dread Wolf killed me it called me a little thief.I never understood why. But I remember taking something that night. A small black crystal that was hanging near the altar where my mother died. I hid it. I’ve carried it with me ever since.

Slowly, she reaches into the worn leather neck pouch she never takes off. When her fingers close around the object inside, a faint glow leaks out between her knuckles cold, dark, and utterly wrong. The ominous light casts deep, hollow shadows across her face.

The second she pulls the crystal fully into the open air, every wolf in the chamber recoils.

A bitter, freezing pulse moves straight through the bond like a shared, violent flinch. My mark flares white-hot in recognition and instinctive terror. Heat and ice crash together beneath my skin, making my stomach turn. Kai’s arms tighten around me hard enough to bruise. Even Luna stirs against my chest with a soft, uneasy whimper, her tiny face turning toward the crystal as if she can feel its dark pull.

The temperature in the stone chamber plunges toward freezing.

Eve stares down at the glowing black stone resting in her palm like it might burn straight through her skin. Her hand is trembling uncontrollably.

This is the key, she says, her voice barely above a breath. To the Blackwood Citadel.