Serena felt the impact through the matebond, so sharp and sudden it split her vision. She gasped, inhaling water, choking on it.

A third tentacle wrapped around her waist and ripped her from Gav’s arms, dragging her downward into the black. Her blood spiraled through the water like smoke.

The creature wanted her. It had always wanted her. The men were obstacles. She was the prize.

Her eyes blazed molten gold.

She fabricated a sword, and cut the tentacle in a blur, her instincts taking over.

The sword vibrated, changing into a bow of pure light. She drew the string back, muscles trembling, body screaming, the wound in her side pumping blood into the dark.

She fired.

The golden arrow tore through the water with a low, thunderous hum, then split mid-flight into a dozen smaller arrows that wove together into a massive net of celestial light.

The net expanded around Fin and Dex. It didn’t touch them, didn’t pull them, passed over their bodies as though they were part of the water itself. But when it met the tentacles dragging them down, it snapped tight, binding them in crackling golden light. The creature shrieked, silent and violent, tentacles retracting as though electrocuted, thrashing backward into the abyss.

Gav shot downward in a blur of speed, cutting through the water towards her.

The bow dissolved from her hands. The gold in her eyes flickered. The token was still locked in her fist.

She had nothing left.

He had zero oxygen reserves. His lungs were already convulsing, diaphragm spasming against the emptiness, his body’s involuntary demand for a breath he couldn’t take. The cold had eaten through every layer of warmth Serena’s magic had given him. His muscles were cramping. His vision was narrowing.

He didn’t slow down.

He found her in the dark.

She was drifting. The gold in her eyes was guttering. The token was still locked in her fist by a grip that existed on willpower alone. Blood streamed from her side in ribbons that the sapphire light turned black.

He hooked his arm around her ribs, dragging her into his chest. Her head lolled against his shoulder. Her mouth was open. That terrified him more than the dark, more than the cold, more than the thing still thrashing somewhere below them.

He kicked upward. One arm locked around her, the other clawing through water so cold it had stopped registering as temperature and started registering as pain. His legs were failing. Not weakening. Failing. The muscles in his thighs seized and released in random bursts, firing on instinct instead of command, and every kick sent a white bolt of cramping up through his hip and into his spine.

He kicked anyway.

The surface was a lie. It looked close. It stayed close. It never got closer. The sapphire glow below him was fading, which meant the lakebed was dropping away, which meant he was rising, but his vision was tunneling so fast the logic barely registered. His lungs had stopped spasming. That was worse. That meant his body had quit asking and started accepting.

Ten more seconds. You give me ten more seconds and I will get her out of this water.

He didn’t know who he was talking to. God. Himself. The wolf pacing behind his ribs with a fury that had nowhere to go.

The water above him shifted from black to charcoal to grey. Then he broke the surface for the final time and didn’t stop.

Air hit his face like a fist. He sucked it in so hard his throat cracked, a raw, animal sound that echoed across the lake’s surface. Serena gasped against him, choking on blood and water.

The shore was forty yards out. Maybe fifty. In calm water, on a good day, with full lungs and warm muscles, it was nothing. Right now it was a war.

"Stay with me." His voice was wrecked. Gravel and water and not enough oxygen. "Serena. Stay with me."

She coughed. Blood and lake water hit his jaw. Her fingers were still white-knuckled around the token, pressed against his chest now, and he could feel the edges of it digging into his skin through his soaked shirt.

Good. Angry is good. Angry means alive.

The cold was doing something to his coordination. His left arm kept misfiring, the paddle stroke pulling wide instead of straight, dragging them off course. He corrected. Corrected again. His kick rhythm was disintegrating, one leg driving while the other locked and trembled, so he switched to a scissor kick and lost half his speed but kept his line.

Twenty yards.

Serena’s breathing hitched. Then steadied. Then hitched again, and her body convulsed against his chest in a cough that sounded like it came from the bottom of her lungs. He tightened his arm across her and kept kicking.

"You held it." He was talking to keep himself conscious now. Words as a lifeline. "You held the token. You psychotic, stubborn, beautiful woman, you held it."

She didn’t answer. But her grip on the token tightened, and her free hand found his forearm and closed around it. Not squeezing. Resting. Telling him she was still in there without wasting the air it would cost to speak.

Ten yards.

Shore.

Gav shifted his grip without slowing. One arm under her knees. One under her shoulders. He hauled her fully out of the water and sprinted onto the rocky shore, boots slamming against stone, carrying her with the speed of a man who would outrun the lake itself if it tried to follow.

He carried her far enough from the edge that no tentacle could reach. He set her down gently, braced over her for a moment, scanning the water behind him with the focus of a man who expected the lake to rise and follow.

It didn’t.

The water churned.

Serena’s ragged, blood-tinged breathing was the only sound on the shore.

Her eyes were closed. The token was still locked in her fist, her knuckles white around it, held by a grip that had outlasted her consciousness. Blood seeped from the wound in her side, pooling slowly beneath her on the stone.

The waterfall thundered. The false stars shifted above them. Somewhere in the lake, Fin and Dex were still submerged.

Her lips were blue. Her skin was ice-cold. Blood stained her training suit from the wound in her side and from whatever was happening inside her that was worse. Her breath was barely there, shallow, wet, each exhale carrying a sound that Gav’s instincts categorized as very bad before his brain could form the clinical word.

"Hyran. Heal her now. Move."

His voice cut through the cavern, raw and commanding, carrying the authority of a Gamma who had never once pulled rank and was pulling it now.

He was already running back towards the lake. He might not have Alpha strength or speed, but he did have a Gamma’s strength and he would damn sure use it before he let his best friend die.

He dove.

Neither one was dying today on his watch.