Chapter 58: Seven Seconds To Lose Everything

CLASSIFIED (MISREP) — STRIKE TEAM

Two kings loved her. Neither was allowed to say it.

Twelve miles between the jungle and the exit. Six hours to cross it. One held her the entire time. The other wasn’t allowed to.

When she died, both men broke. Before it was redacted, the incident log recorded her as dead for seven seconds. But the men in that clearing knew that number was a lie. The actual duration was longer. How much longer depended on which man you asked and how much he was willing to admit.

Everything that happened after? Also classified.

INCIDENT LOG #1: HOSTILE CONTACT

CODENAME: Naptime’s Over

Kael raised a fist. The column stopped.

Then he pointed up.

Thirty feet above them, three dark fae clung to the ceiling with their claws. Eyes closed. Dormant. Roosting like bats in the dark.

He held up three fingers, drew a line across his throat, and pointed at Sterling.

Sterling stepped beneath the nearest fae and drew his blade in silence. Kael mirrored the position beneath the second.

He held up three fingers. Two. One.

Both blades went up simultaneously. Through the jaw, through the skull. Two fae died in their sleep. The bodies fell and both men caught them one-handed before they hit the ground.

The third fae’s eyes opened. Its mouth opened to scream.

Before it could make a sound, Nicholas’s blade hit it in the throat from twenty feet away. It released from the ceiling and fell, and Ryker caught it by the wing before it hit the rocks.

Kael looked at Nicholas. He didn’t hand out respect easily, and Nicholas had just qualified for a trial period.

Ryker: Nine out of ten. Deducting a point because neither of them stuck the landing with any flair.

Sterling: The objective was silence. My execution was perfect.

Ryker: I’ve slept with women who faked it better than that performance.

Sterling: Since when do you get women, Ryker?

Ryker: I’ve had more women this month than you’ve had facial expressions this year.

They kept moving. Griffin stepped over the first body, around the second, and accidentally kicked the third.

The ravine bent east and decided to become a swamp. The floor dropped into a channel of black water stretching wall to wall with no way around it.

INCIDENT LOG #2: ASSET TRANSPORT

CODENAME: Mystery Water and the Worst Husband Alive

Kael stepped into it first. Maddox followed. The cold water hit his boots and climbed his shins. Guinevere’s legs dipped below the surface before he adjusted, lifting her higher against his chest.

Griffin: Something is touching my leg right now.

Ryker: Make sure to die quietly.

Griffin: I want my eulogy to be a lie. Tell them I died in battle. A big one.

Ryker: I’ll say you killed thirty men.

Griffin: Fifty.

Ryker: Done.

Kael turned his head, scanning the column behind him. Maddox immediately threw Guinevere over his shoulder like cargo. Her head hung down his back completely limp. The audition for Worst Husband Alive was back in session.

Ryker: That was aggressive.

Maddox: I was gentle.

Ryker: She’s upside down, Maddox.

Kael didn’t bother to hide his disgust. It was the first thing Maddox had done all night that looked convincing.

The channel stretched for two hundred yards. Kael checked over his shoulder twice more, so Maddox kept her over his shoulder. Her hair stayed dry, tucked into the collar of her training suit.

Ryker: Her head is about six inches from the water, Maddox.

Maddox: I’m aware.

Behind him, Nicholas’s eyes were glowing wolf gold like headlights in the dark, burning holes into the back of Maddox’s skull with a patience that had an expiration date.

Ryker: Four inches. We’re approaching baptism territory.

Maddox: I said I’m aware.

Ryker: Two. One and a half. And he’s waterboarding his wife.

Maddox flipped her back into his arms.

The worst was behind them. The water shallowed, the walls opened up, and grey light cut through the exit ahead.

Then the clicking started.

INCIDENT LOG #3: ROUTE DENIAL / HOSTILE PURSUIT

CODENAME: Ask Kael About His Shoulder

"Move," Kael called, all stealth abandoned. He broke into a full sprint, reached the exit, and planted himself there until everyone was through.

Two fae rounded the corner of the bend at full speed, both screaming.

"You dare take our vessel, Ashenvale!"

"Nyxar will drain your blood!"

Kael reached for his flame. In the jungle, the wards had killed it. In the ravine, it answered. Dark flame erupted from his palm, traveling up the wall, cracking stone in a jagged line through the ceiling.

The ceiling gave. The ravine sealed itself in a wall of falling rock. Kael came through the gap with less than a second to spare, clipping his shoulder in the process. Dust and debris exploded outward behind him, pelting the men who had already cleared it.

Maddox turned his back to it, shielding Guinevere.

The dust settled into silence. The kind that only comes after something massive stops trying to kill you.

Ryker spat a mouthful of dust and debris onto the ground. "Beautiful. Gorgeous. Was the dramatic exit through the collapsing ravine part of the plan, or did you freestyle that to impress us?"

Kael, still panting and bleeding from his shoulder, did not dignify this with a response.

Griffin stared at the sealed ravine, then at Kael, then back at the ravine. "Can you teach me that?"

"Griffin," Ryker called. "What did I tell you about asking war criminals to be your mentor?"

Kael ignored both of them. "Flame is spotty in here. Shifting won’t work at all until we clear the wards. So we walk."

The column moved again, Kael at the front, the rest falling in behind him.

INCIDENT LOG #4: [REDACTED]

For exactly ninety seconds, nothing went wrong.

Then everything did.

Her pain came through the matebond without warning. One second Maddox was walking. The next, he was on his knees, cradling Guinevere against his chest. Her pulse was there, but wrong. Irregular. Skipping beats, then doubling, then skipping again.

The grunt that came out of Nicholas was involuntary, low, and wrong enough that Damon’s head snapped toward him before his knees even hit the ground. His palms hit the stone, his arms locked straight, and his whole body shook with the effort of not going flat.

Ryker was at Maddox’s side, blade drawn, scanning the ravine walls for the threat he assumed was coming from outside.

The threat was inside.

"What’s happening to her?" Maddox looked up at Kael. His jaw was trembling and he didn’t care who saw it.

Kael’s face betrayed him for half a second before he locked it down.

He moved beside Maddox, scented her wrist, then her neck, reading her blood chemistry with the practiced focus of a man who had spent years studying magic and biologies that most dragons would never encounter.

Nicholas dragged his head up and found Kael’s face at her throat. His wolf didn’t distinguish between dragon politics and threat. It only knew that a man who was not him and not Maddox had his mouth inches from her pulse, and every instinct he had was screaming a single word on repeat.

"This isn’t dark magic." Kael looked up at Jaxon. "Mage. Is any of your magic working? Portal would be ideal."

The mage knelt beside Kael, his hands barely glowing. The wards were still affecting his magic but he could still push some to her.

"The runes are still blocking me." Jaxon’s face was grey with effort.

Her heart sputtered, then stopped.

All color drained from Jaxon’s face. "She’s gone. I’m sorry."

Five words. The jungle went silent. The grey light above them went flat and cold, and every man in that clearing stopped breathing at the same time because every man in that clearing knew what those words meant for the king kneeling in front of them.

"No." Maddox shook his head, his hand moving to her face. "Guinevere. Wake up, baby."

ONE.

The gold light under her skin flickered in one final effort. Then it went out like a match in the ocean. The absence hit like a fist.

TWO.

Maddox bowed over her like a wall collapsing. "Don’t you fucking dare."

THREE.

"No, no, no." He shoved his hands against her chest and he pressed down. Once. Twice. The compressions of a man who had decided that death was a suggestion he was not accepting. "You don’t get to do this. Not here. Not in this fucking jungle."

FOUR.

He pulled her into his arms, her head falling against his neck, and the sob that tore out of him silenced the clearing. Every man looked away. His tears ran down her face like they were his and hers at the same time, and she felt none of them.

FIVE.

"Maddox." Sterling’s voice was steady, because someone’s had to be. "There are more coming. We need to move."

The part of Maddox’s brain that was still a king understood that Sterling was right. But the part of him that was her mate could not process the idea of standing up and carrying her body away from this spot, because walking away meant giving up on her. That part of him would burn this entire continent to ash.

SIX.

"Wake up." He cupped her face. "Please, baby. Please."

Her face didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t open. She gave him nothing, because she had nothing left to give.

Maddox laid her down gently. Then he stood, turned, and drove his fist into the ravine wall so hard the stone fractured under his knuckles. His hand came back bloody. He hit it again. The second impact split his knuckles to the bone. He didn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything except the flat silence in his chest where she used to be.

SEVEN.

Nicholas moved in a blur with no warning. Two strides. One hand on her jaw. Fangs in her neck.

The clearing erupted.