Quinn’s POV
The scream still burned his throat as Rowan’s small hand slipped from his grip.
“ROWAN!”
The abyss swallowed his pup, shadow rising like a tide eager to consume him whole. For one agonizing heartbeat, Quinn was frozen against the barrier—his bloodied hand clawing at empty space where his son had been. The Sovereign’s fire howled around him, furious, searing, but he didn’t feel it. He felt only the hollow ripping through his chest.
Then instinct, primal and unrelenting, took over.
“No,” Quinn rasped, voice raw as broken glass. “If he falls—I fall too.”
Without another thought, he hurled himself against the barrier. The fractured wall of fire shrieked, lashing at his flesh, trying to throw him back. The laws of the trial clawed at his bones, at his soul, demanding he obey—d
