Page 38 of Curses and Casualties (Hunters Hollow #3)

Georgia

T he portal spits us out in darkness so complete I can’t see my own hand in front of my face.

My knees hit stone hard enough to bruise, and I bite back a curse.

The sound of dripping water echoes off invisible walls, and the air smells of minerals and age—deep earth scents that my geology brain automatically starts categorizing even as my heart races.

“Ryan?” My voice sounds small in the vastness.

“Here.” His hand finds mine, warm and solid. “Fuck. These aren’t the tunnels I know. This isn’t anywhere near the main chamber.”

“Amara said she could only get us into the system, not to a specific location.” I stand carefully, one hand trailing along the rough wall. “But it’s OK. I can feel them—the heartstones. Luna seems to know where to go.”

We move carefully, hands linked, trusting our enhanced senses to guide us. The ceremonial robes are completely impractical for cave navigation. The silk catches and tears on every projection, and more than once I hear Ryan curse as he bangs his head on low-hanging rock.

“Last time I take Amara’s fashion advice,” I mutter, yanking my hem free from yet another snag.

“Shh.” Ryan stops, placing his arm in front to halt me too. “Listen.”

The sounds of battle filter through tons of solid rock—muffled but unmistakable. Snarls and howls, the crack of magic meeting magic, and underneath it all, screams of pain. Our friends are up there, fighting and dying while we’re stumbling around in the dark.

“We must be getting closer.”

“We are,” I whisper, feeling Luna’s pull. “Left here. Then down. We’re going deeper.”

The descent is treacherous. Natural cave formations give way to carved passages, ancient work that predates the pack by centuries. The darkness becomes absolute—even our enhanced senses can’t penetrate it.

“I can’t see anything,” Ryan says, his arm around me as his hand trails along the wall.

Allow me, Luna offers, and suddenly my skin begins to glow with soft silver light. Not the intense flare of arousal or fear, but a steady illumination that pushes back the dark.

“Handy,” Ryan murmurs, and in the Luna-light I can see him smile.

My fingers trace symbols worn smooth by age as we descend. The carvings are beautiful and alien, depicting wolves and moons and intertwining patterns that I’d love to stop and study, but I don’t have the time.

“What is this place?” I wonder aloud.

“I don’t know,” Ryan says. “I’ve never been down this far. It’s older than the pack, though. Maybe older than any pack we know of.”

The tunnel opens gradually, walls widening until we can walk side by side. A faint glow appears ahead—heartstone light, unmistakable in its rainbow brilliance.

“Wait.” Ryan pulls me against the wall, his body tense. “We can’t just walk in there. It’s too quiet.”

He’s right. The main chamber should be guarded, especially now. But there’s no scent of wolves, no sounds of movement. Just that steady, pulsing glow and?—

“Ah, seems our honored guests have arrived. Don’t be shy. Come on out.”

The voice echoes off stone as we step into the sacred chamber. My blood turns to ice. Elder Gray stands in the center of the space, looking exactly as he did the night he declared me unworthy—cold, old, utterly sure of his superiority. But it’s the chamber itself that steals my breath.

It’s been completely transformed.

Where once there were scattered heartstones in natural formations, now hundreds—maybe thousands—are arranged in neat piles along the walls. It’s as if they’ve been…sorted. But why?

“Elder Gray.” Ryan moves slightly in front of me, and I feel his wolf rising beneath his skin.

“Ryan Blackwell. The failed guardian.” Elder Gray’s smile is thin as paper cuts. “And Dr. Harper, the unfortunate vessel. Do you know what I find amusing?”

“Your sparkling personality?” Fear makes me mouthy. It’s a character flaw.

His eyes narrow, but he continues as if I hadn’t spoken.

“For three centuries, we’ve suppressed the knowledge of Soul Bonds.

Hidden the rituals, destroyed the texts, eliminated those who asked too many questions.

All to prevent this moment.” He gestures at the elaborate heartstone patterns.

“And yet here you are, playing out a script written in desperation by those who didn’t understand what they were meddling with. ”

“Get to the point,” Ryan growls.

“The point, boy, is that without Luna’s curse, all you would have needed was a simple mating ceremony during the supermoon.

Any clearing would have done. A few words, a physical joining under the moon’s light, and the bond would form naturally.

” His smile widens. “But the curse requires such specific steps, doesn’t it?

Moonwater blessed by a witch. Wolfsbane to weaken the barriers.

A sacred space aligned with ancient power.

And Luna’s heartstone...” He lets out a cynical laugh.

“Good luck finding those fragments now. We’ve been very thorough with our.

.. clean up of the space. What do you think? ”

My hand tightens on the ritual pouch. He knows. He knows exactly what we need to do. And he thinks he’s made it impossible.

“It really doesn’t matter what you think. But the point is, you made this trap so very easy to set,” Elder Gray continues. “You had to come here. You had to follow these exact steps. All we had to do was wait.”

Two figures step from the shadows behind him. Witches, both female, their hands already glowing with sickly green light—no wonder we couldn’t sense anything as we approached. And they’re helping him. Shit.

“No convenient rescues this time,” Elder Gray says. “No sympathetic pack members to provide distraction. Your allies are rather busy dying on the mountain. It’s sad to see, really.”

“You’re lying.” Ryan keeps his face neutral, but his voice shakes just enough for his wolf’s growl to thread through it. “You want us to give up. But you underestimate what we are.”

Elder Gray lifts a single finger. The witches step forward. Their magic hums in the air—sharp, electrical, a charged field that makes the fine hairs rise on my arms.

“There will be no heroic last stands tonight,” Elder Gray says. “You are both property of the Council now. But first, I think a demonstration is in order. Let the pack see what happens to those who defy the natural order. Your deaths will be... instructive.”

The witches raise their hands, power building. Ryan tenses to spring, but we both know he can’t reach them before the spells hit. This is it. We’re going to fail here, right in sight of our goal. Everyone who fought for us will have died for nothing?—

The symbols on our robes flare to life.

The light is blinding, silver-white and sharp as lightning. It tears through the green magic like it’s made of cobwebs. I hear the witches curse—actually curse, not cast—and the air tears open with the distinctive sound of reality being politely asked to step aside.

“Shit!” one witch yelps. “High fae!”

A figure steps through the tear, elegant and inhuman—our fae guide from camp, their shimmering cloak now radiating with enough power to bleach the stone walls. They glide rather than walk, every movement smooth as water.

“You are not invited,” Elder Gray sputters, but the fae simply smiles, unbothered.

“Neither were you,” they answer. Their hand flicks once, and both witches are yanked to the ground by invisible force, their magic snuffed out in the same gesture you’d use to close a book.

Ryan doesn’t hesitate. He lunges, shifting so quickly his dark fur and human form merge, twisting into something enormous and terrifying.

He hits Elder Gray’s midsection, slamming the ancient wolf into the wall.

Bone cracks loud enough to echo around the chamber.

Robe torn, Gray snarls and drops the human guise, his own monstrous wolf form erupting in a ripple of fur, fangs, and sheer size.

Luna is howling in my ears— Do it now, do it now, do it now!

—but the heartstone altar is at least fifteen feet away.

In slow motion I see Gray’s jaws snap for Ryan’s throat, and I know I have maybe two seconds before the witches recover or the fae lose interest in helping and decide to simply wipe us all away and start over.

The air convulses with power—feral, pulsing, totally unrestrained.

I know, in this moment, that the only way out is forward. The ritual, or death.

My feet pound the uneven cave floor, every step a jolt through my bad leg, but I don’t focus on pain.

Only on finding the right space to use as an altar, the shimmer of the fragments Owen risked everything to give us still wrapped in Evanora’s bundle.

I claw the kit open with my teeth, cutting my chin in my hurry—don’t care, doesn’t matter—moon water, check; wolfsbane, check; witch’s blood, check; Luna’s fragments, glowing like a dying galaxy, check. That’s everything.

Ryan and Elder Gray are everywhere. Fur and teeth, clumps of blood-dark hair, the scrape of claws on stone and the snapped-off yelps as fury eclipses all reason.

Ryan is bigger, but Gray is old, his movements weirdly precise even through his rage.

Every time Ryan takes the upper hand, Gray counters, smashing Ryan into stalagmites, biting with ice-white fangs that barely miss the arteries in Ryan’s throat.

Something cracks, and the cave ceiling rains dust and chunks of rock.

Fae light dances at the edge of my vision.

The witches are flat on the ground, their magic useless, but I know that can’t last forever.

Elder Gray’s entire focus is on taking Ryan’s life, and Ryan is losing ground.

Despite being stronger than a regular alpha, they’re still outmatched by the elder’s decades of brutality.

Every time Ryan slams Gray down, the old wolf comes up laughing, jaws frothing, eyes black with annihilation.