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Emma, where are you?

A ripping worked through me, forming an opening in my mind, and I could taste the tartness of her mouth, the sensation of her tongue pressed to mine.So close…

“Logan!” Olivia shrieked. “Come on! There’s a hidden door.”

I scrambled to my feet and bolted to the cabin andthrough the door, knocking the front door off its frame as I burst through into the room where Olivia stood, pointing down at a wooden square at her feet. A wrought-iron pull handle waited, partially covered by leaves and overgrowth. The hatch had been pieced together using large wooden slats.

Dropping to my knees, I mentally called to my mate, encouraging her to hang on. The metal burned my hand when my fingers closed around it, but I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. Emma was down there. She had to be.

The others gathered behind us as I hefted the hatch to the side. A ladder led down, but I couldn’t make out the bottom. Inky darkness waited, and Emma was on the other side.

“Logan, don’t?—”

I didn’t wait. I tucked my arms in and leaped down, consequences be damned. I landed two stories down in a shallow puddle, and pain shot through my legs.

“Oof,” I grunted.

I shifted immediately to my wolf and back to human to heal whatever I’d broken. Still, my ankles ached, and the puddle soaked into the bottoms of my feet, weakening my legs. The liquid was a poison brew.

First one down, first one dead?Not today, Acheron. Not today.

A gust of wind circled me, and colors danced around me as I held tightly to the shifter magic I would need to get through this, to save her. To live beyond today.

“Don’t step in any water,” I yelled back up at the others. “The liquid is some kind of poison. No puddlejumping. Lucky for you, looks like I’ve soaked up the liquid at the bottom of the ladder.”

“Logan,” Olivia snapped. “Don’t you move another step until we get down there.”

“Unlikely,” I answered.

My vision rapidly adjusted to the limited light, provided by two torches on either side of an earthen corridor, supported by wooden beams. Water dripped from the ceiling and ran down the sides, soaking back into the ground. The tunnel ran either direction from the ladder, like an abandoned, out-of-place mining shaft, and that was when I heard it… heardher.

Emma screamed my name, and I cried out at the sweet, sweet sound of heralive.

Images of Acheron dying in my hands filled my mind, and I scrambled away to the left, toward her, ignoring the throbbing in my lower legs. My shift should have fixed it, so it had to be a spell left behind by Acheron.

Olivia hurried down the ladder with the Jasper close behind. “Logan!”

But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

I shifted back to my wolf, my ears swiveling one way and then the other. Acheron chanted words I couldn’t make out, and a warrior’s drum echoed through the cut through the dirt. Throughout the shaft, torches had been fixed to the walls.

Not drums. My pulse thundered through me, the beats of my heart for hers.

She screamed again, and another woman echoed heragony. Who else was down here? Who else had Acheron kidnapped?

Something sharp stabbed my tail, and I whirled to find fox Flynn biting my tail, leaning back to keep me from getting any farther down the tunnel.

Jasper stood behind him, shaking his head, with human Olivia beside him.

“Logan,” she whispered. “We can’t run in there like that. Acheron must have defenses, traps, plans inside of plans.”

As if to give proof to her caution, a rumble rolled up from the depths of the earth, and a fire burst out of the nearest torch and slammed into Jasper, igniting his beard and hair.

“Motherfecker,” he gasped, dropping to the ground and rolling back and forth in a liquid-free spot.

Olivia dropped to the ground beside him, patting out the flames. “Fucking pyro asshole!”

When the flames disappeared, Jasper climbed to his feet, his beard half-burned. “Guess ye’ll get to see me without this when we get back.”