SERAPHINA’S POV

Together, we stepped through.

The barrier closed around us, and for one breathless moment, the world vanished. There was no beach behind us, no ocean, no sun.

Darkness scraped my skin, searching for entry. The silver markings on my back blazed in answer.

Then we broke through the other side.

Sound rushed back.

Waves. Wind. Boots hitting wet sand as the first wave of warriors followed us through.

We stood on Catherine’s island.

The beauty was gone, but not from the landscape. The palm trees still swayed. The water still glittered. The white sand still curved gently along the shore.

But beneath it all, everything felt wrong.

The air smelled too sweet, like flowers left too long in a sealed room. The birds didn’t call. The trees did not rustle naturally, even though the wind moved through them.

Every shadow beneath the foliage seemed thicker than it should have been, and the estate on the ridge gleamed in the distance with polished, indifferent elegance.

Kieran released my hand only to draw closer to my side.

Behind us, the breach shimmered faintly, held open by Alois, Corin, and the others on the far side.

Then the sand shifted.

I went still.

Kieran’s head turned slightly.

Around us, the tree line moved.

One figure stepped out first.

Then another.

Then dozens.

“Here we go,” Kieran murmured.

Rogues emerged from the foliage soundlessly, their eyes sharp with feral malice.

Some gripped weapons. Others bared claws.

Some bore the unmistakable signs of Catherine’s alterations—dark veins crawling beneath their skin, scars too clean to be natural, eyes reflecting light in a way no living wolf’s eyes should.

Then the puppets came.

They stepped from behind the rogues with unnerving stillness, wearing faces that might once have belonged to real people.

Some looked almost alive until they moved, and then the wrongness became impossible to miss.

Their expressions lagged behind their bodies. Their eyes were empty.

Threads of dark magic clung to them like invisible leashes, and beneath those leashes I felt fragments of broken souls.

A warrior behind me whispered a curse.

The trees continued to give them up.

More rogues. More puppets.

Too many to have gathered by chance.

They had been waiting.

Kieran’s power rolled outward, dark and commanding, and every allied warrior behind us shifted into formation with practiced precision.

I stared at the faces of the puppets surrounding us, my stomach twisting.

Some of them were familiar, not because I knew them personally, but because I had seen them before in reports, in missing-person files, in photographs spread across tables back at Nightfang.

Beside me, Kieran’s expression hardened.

His eyes moved across the crowd once.

Then his voice cut through the silence. “Advance.”

The first rogue lunged from the trees with a roar.

He never even made it close. Kieran moved before I fully registered the attack—one second standing beside me and the next becoming nothing but motion and power.

Ashar surged through him with violent force, and Alpha pressure detonated outward like a mountain collapsing beneath unbearable weight.

The rogue was thrown backward so hard that his body slammed into the sand, carving out a shallow crater on impact.

The shockwave rippled through the others, and several rogues staggered as if struck by an invisible wall, some dropping to one knee while others blinked in disoriented confusion beneath the crushing force of Kieran’s dominance.

But the puppets kept walking.

They did not hesitate. They did not falter. They simply continued forward with the same hollow, measured steps as if nothing had happened at all.

The battlefield erupted around us as our warriors charged.

Steel flashed beneath the sun as they collided with the first wave of enemies, claws and blades tearing through the heavy silence that had hung over the beach only seconds earlier.

The sounds crashed together into a storm of movement and impact—growls and shouted commands mixing with the clash of metal, the spray of sand beneath pounding feet, and the savage snarls of wolves as bodies met head-on.

One puppet charged at me.

She looked about twenty, with dark hair tangled around half-healed scars twisting along the length of her throat.

For one terrible heartbeat, our eyes met, and my chest tightened painfully because they were not empty.

Something still existed inside them. Something...trapped, like a person struggling beneath deep water.

Then the darkness tightened around whatever remained of her soul, and the flicker vanished.

She lunged.

I caught her wrist before her claws reached me and twisted hard enough for bone to snap beneath my grip.

My free hand pressed against her chest as silver power poured from my palm, and the scream that tore from her throat cut straight through me.

Darkness peeled away from her skin in burning ribbons as the magic binding her together began unraveling piece by piece.

It was not enough to save her—I already knew that before I even tried.

There was too much damage, too much of her soul already shattered and consumed, and all I could give her now was release.

Her body crumpled soundlessly into the sand.

Pain stabbed my chest, and I hated Catherine all over again.

None of them had chosen this.

None of them deserved this.

"I’m sorry," I whispered.

But grief had no place on a battlefield.

Three more were already headed my way.

I ducked beneath claws aimed at my throat and drove my elbow into one attacker’s ribs before spinning sharply and kicking another backward hard enough to send him stumbling into the advancing line behind him.

Beside me, Kieran fought like violence itself had taken human form. Everything about him had become sharper, faster, deadlier.

Ashar had fully surfaced now, and I could see it in the burning glow of Kieran’s eyes and in the terrifying grace of his movements.

A puppet lunged for his blind side.

Kieran caught it by the throat without even turning.

The movement looked effortless as he lifted the body and slammed it into another advancing enemy hard enough to send both crashing through two palm trees, the trunks splintering apart beneath the impact.

But despite how many we had put down, another wave replaced them.

And another behind that.

And another after that.

They advanced with relentless, mechanical certainty, pouring from the trees in endless numbers like a tide.

Oceans eventually pulled back, eventually surrendered to gravity and the moon, but these things simply kept moving forward without hesitation or exhaustion.

Near my left flank, Brett tore through two altered rogues with brutal efficiency, blood streaking across his arms as claws extended from partially shifted hands.

He moved with vicious precision, every strike landing exactly where it needed to, while Maris and other Seabreeze operatives flowed around him like water finding cracks in stone.

Another explosion of power erupted nearby.

I turned just in time to see Kieran drive his fist into a puppet’s chest.

The body folded inward unnaturally, but before it hit the ground, another stepped over it, and then another followed behind that, advancing with the same mechanical certainty.

My pulse stumbled as understanding crashed into me all at once.

"Kieran!"

His head turned towards me.

"They’re stalling us!"

The realization settled with sickening clarity as I looked across the battlefield.

These enemies had never been meant to defeat us. They were here to slow us down, to keep us occupied while time slipped away.

Even dismantling them took effort because Catherine’s magic kept forcing damaged bodies forward long after they should have collapsed.

Whatever she was preparing, she was buying time for it.

Kieran understood immediately.

His expression darkened as another puppet reached him. He caught the creature by the skull and twisted sharply, the sound of snapping bone disappearing beneath the chaos of the battlefield.

"Everyone push forward!" he roared.

His Alpha command crashed over the beach with overwhelming force. "Break through! Ignore anything that isn’t directly in front of you!"

The formation shifted instantly. Warriors surged ahead, tightened around the flanks, and moved inward to carve openings through the enemy line.

We stopped fighting to win and started fighting to move.

I drove silver power through another puppet and pushed forward beside Kieran as bodies collided around us and sand sprayed beneath pounding feet.

The estate above the ridge slowly drew closer through the trees, but not nearly fast enough.

A cold warning raced down my spine so suddenly that I went rigid, and beside me, Kieran reacted at the same moment. He stopped so abruptly that sand kicked around his boots.

The battlefield had not stopped, but it had shifted in a way that felt ominous.

The rogues nearest to us began stepping back while the puppets slowed their advance, not retreating but creating space.

Slowly, almost ceremoniously, a path began opening through the trees ahead.

Footsteps echoed across the sand, unhurried and calm amid the violence surrounding us.

Then a figure emerged from the shadows beneath the palms, dressed in a dark suit, his hands resting casually in his pockets, a cruel smile curving across his face.

"Now this," he said smoothly, "is quite the entrance."