Page 41

41

KENDALL

T he air gets colder the deeper we go.

Not just in temperature—but in weight. Like the walls are made of grief and time and the kind of silence that isn’t empty, but watching.

The others are quiet. No one cracks a joke now. No one mutters. It’s just boots on stone and shallow breathing and the sound of our world changing, one step at a time.

Callum’s close. Always close. I can feel the heat of him at my back, his tension curled tight in his frame like a wolf ready to lunge. But his hand brushes mine when I slow. Barely there. Just enough to say: I’m still with you.

It’s enough to keep me moving. I’m not sure what it is, but being here, all of this happening, it’s made me realize I’m done running from him. That I need him in more ways than whatever it is destiny wants from us. And with Dad missing, his words sink in even harder from our last talk. And I want my world to change with Callum in it, not without him.

We hit the final curve, and then the tunnel opens up.

I stop so fast Ridge almost runs into me.

“Holy shit,” someone breathes behind me.

We’re standing in front of a sealed chamber.

Not just a door— a vault. Massive, curved, etched with the same symbols we saw on the cursed ward above. Only this time… they’re glowing. Soft gold, like the shimmer of my veins when I shift.

I take a slow step forward through the others.

“Kendall,” Callum says, warning in his voice.

But the door’s already humming.

The runes flicker. Whisper. And the center of the vault spirals open, forming a circle just big enough for a hand.

Mine.

“I think it wants you to touch it,” one of the wolves says, voice shaking.

“No shit,” Ridge mutters.

I glance back at Callum.

He doesn’t say anything.

But he nods once.

I press my palm into the hollow.

And the door breathes.

That’s the only way to describe it—it exhales. A rush of wind and heat and something older than language. The light swells. The stone glows. And then it opens.

Not with a sound. Not with a grind or a crash. Just a shift. A silent invitation.

The room beyond is empty. Mostly.

But every one of us feels it—the absence . The space where something was. You know how a bed still holds a person’s shape right after they leave it? This place feels like that. But darker.

There are sigils on the floor—ripped, marred, burned at the edges. Whatever power was here? It was ripped out.

Callum steps beside me.

“This is it,” he says softly. “The weapon Elias said the Brood is using. The Hollowed. Or where it was anyway.”

My mouth’s dry. “How do you know?”

He kneels, runs his fingers along the carved floor. “Elias said it rearranges things. Power. Identity. The wards here—they were containment. Not protection.”

“For who?”

He meets my eyes. “Not who. What. ”

Something stirs inside me. Like a memory that doesn’t belong to me.

Callum stands. “This place was built to hold something that wasn’t supposed to wake. You opened it. That means?—”

“I’m part of it,” I whisper.

He steps in close. Not touching me, but close enough that I can feel the pull between us, like a current.

“You’re not the weapon,” he says. “You’re the key. ”

Suddenly I’m not cold anymore. Because this moment is too full of fire.

Me. Him. The others watching but not really seeing. Just us, on the edge of something neither of us understands, but both of us feel.

And I don’t care how dangerous that is.

I care that he’s here. That his hand is near mine. That he’s not running away.

“I don’t want any part of this,” I whisper.

“I know.”

His throat works already sensing my hesitation at the danger we all may be in. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I believe him. But the moment’s already gone.

Because Ridge steps forward, eyes sharp. “We need to move. If the Brood’s already got whatever was in here, they’re ahead of us now.”

Callum nods. “Let’s get topside.”

I stare once more at the empty space before I turn away.

It takes longer to climb back out.

The path feels longer and denser now. Like the air’s grown thick with ghosts.

We’re halfway back to the surface when I feel it—the wrongness. There’s something out there now that wasn’t there when we descended.

We hit the treeline near the upper exit and stop dead.

There, standing in a crooked half-circle like they’ve been waiting for us, are Gideon’s Torch.

Nine of them. Faces half-covered, weapons drawn, fire at their backs. And in the center?

Stefan.

The air between us crackles, thick with tension, like a storm about to snap. Every inch of me is locked and coiled, trying to read Stefan’s face—what’s left of the boy I once knew and the man he’s trying so damn hard to be now.

Stefan stands at the front of the Gideon’s Torch line, but he’s not their leader—not really. That much I can see in the way his grip tightens too fast around the hilt of his blade. The way his broad shoulders—still leaner than Callum’s, still shaped like the swimmer’s frame I used to trace with my fingertips—tense like he’s trying to hold something broken together.

His dark hair is messier than usual, curls longer than when I last ran my hands through them. And his eyes—God, those sharp, glacier-blue eyes—used to soften when they looked at me. Now? Now they’re rimmed in red and fear and guilt and something close to hatred, but not quite. That’s what kills me most.

He’s not just angry.

He’s hurt.

“You’re with them?” I ask again, my voice sharper now, cold in ways I didn’t know it could be.

His mouth twists. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

I want to scream. “So you picked a death cult?”

“I picked safety!” he shouts. “I picked a world that made sense! You left me?—”

“I didn’t leave you,” I snap. “You saw me change, and you walked away.”

“You changed into something I couldn’t recognize, Kendall,” he says, voice cracking at the edge. “You didn’t even try to explain. One day you were mine, and the next you were gone. Replaced.”

The words slam into me harder than I expect. I inhale through my nose, trying not to feel it, but it’s already burrowing deep.

“You think I wanted this?” I whisper. “You think I wanted to be something you’d come to hate?”

His jaw flexes. His fingers twitch around his weapon.

“You lied,” he says again, softer this time. Like that one word is the crux of it all. “Even after everything with my parents. You kept it from me.”

I can smell the heartbreak on him. Bittersweet and sharp like burnt sugar and gunmetal. It leaks off him like sweat.

“I didn’t lie to hurt you,” I say. “I lied because I didn’t know how to survive your truth.”

He flinches.

Behind me, I hear Callum shift his weight, and I know his patience is paper-thin right now. His shaggy brown-blond hair whips lightly in the breeze, that wild look sparking in his hazel-green eyes. He’s every inch the predator Stefan fears he is—tall, sharp-jawed, unrelenting. But he holds his place. For me.

And that says more than words.

Stefan sees him too. Sees the way Callum stands just behind me, the silent shield, the one I never asked for but somehow ended up needing anyway.

The muscle in Stefan’s cheek jumps. “So this is what you want now? Him?”

“No,” I say. “This isn’t about him.”

But it’s not not about him either.

Stefan swallows hard. His face twists into something bitter. “They promised me a world without monsters.”

“I’m not a monster,” I whisper.

He shakes his head like he wants to believe me, but can’t. “You don’t even know what you are, Kendall.”

That somehow hurts more than everything else.

But I straighten. “You’re right. I don’t. Not fully. But I know I’m not afraid of it anymore. And that’s something.”

He looks down for the first time, breathing heavy. Like his lungs are full of grief.

“I loved you,” he says. Barely a whisper.

I nod. “I know.”

His eyes meet mine again, and in them, I see the ghost of what we were. Movie nights. Kisses in the truck. Promises we never said out loud because they felt too big.

But that version of us is dead now.

“You only loved me when I was small,” I say. “When I didn’t ask for more. When I didn’t become more.”

He doesn’t deny it.

“You should go,” I tell him, heart low in my chest. “Before this gets bloody.”

“You won’t hurt me,” he says. Maybe it’s a plea. Maybe it’s a dare.

“No,” I agree. “But they will.”

I glance back at Callum, and his eyes meet mine. There's something unspoken between us, something steady. He won’t let Stefan lay a hand on me. Not again.

Stefan’s gaze flicks from me to Callum. To the others. Then back to me.

And for one second—just one—I see him falter. A sliver of the boy I knew trying to fight his way through the man he’s become.

Then it’s gone.

“We don’t take orders from animals like you,” he spits.

And that’s it.

Callum moves, fast as lightning.

I throw an arm out, stopping him mid-step, my fingers brushing his chest. His heart pounds like a war drum beneath my palm, but he stops. Because I asked him to.

Stefan sees it.

He sees how easily Callum listens to me. How natural the bond is—even unspoken.

And it wrecks him.