The stone beneath the dais shuddered.
Not a quake. Not a collapse.
A breath.
Like something ancient had just inhaled for the first time in a century, and it didn’t like the air it found.
“I don’t like that sound,” Elias muttered, shaking blood from his claws. The Warden’s remains smoked at his feet, still twitching with dying magic. “Wardens don’t die alone. They’re bound to things older than them. Nasty things.”
Kade didn’t even glance at him. His silver eyes were locked on the cracks spiderwebbing across the marble dais. “Then whatever’s down there is about to be very, very pissed. And I’d bet my fated mate it’s pissed at _us_.”
Darius moved before I could blink.
One second he was beside me, the next he was in front of me and Aria, his broad frame a wall of muscle and barel
