Page 36 of Echoes From the Void (Shadow Locke Shifters #3)

Chapter 35

Matteo

Wrong.

The word hits my consciousness before I’m fully awake, a primal instinct that makes my new fangs descend into killing length. The pack bonds pulse with warning, but it’s the scent that truly wakes me—or rather, the absence of it. Frankie’s familiar essence, the one my predator nature has cataloged as mate/alpha/protect , is hours cold.

I surge upward, dislodging Leo who had sprawled partly across me in sleep. My enhanced senses catalog the room in seconds: the lingering warmth in the sheets where she should be, the fading trace of her shadows like smoke in the air, the way her guardian wolf flickers in the corner like a dying flame. My shadows rise instinctively, searching for their mate.

“Matteo?” Leo’s voice carries rare tension as he wakes to my movement. Through our bond, his usual sunshine dims with growing alarm. Beside him, Bishop’s eyes snap open with Guardian alertness while Dorian’s frost spreads in agitated patterns across the ceiling.

“She’s gone.” The words emerge as more growl than speech, my control slipping as fear wars with fury. My fangs lengthen further, predator instincts screaming to hunt/find/claim. “They’re both-”

The foundation shudders beneath us, cutting off my words. Through our bond, I catch fragments of Frankie’s emotions—determination, love, and something that tastes like acceptance. Like goodbye.

“The void,” Bishop says, already moving with precise efficiency. His Guardian marks pulse as he retrieves weapons that probably shouldn’t be kept by the bed. My enhanced vision catches the slight tremor in his hands—the only sign of his carefully controlled panic. “They’ve gone to-”

“No.” The word rips from my throat as I launch toward the door, shadows writhing with protective fury. But before any of us reach it, reality itself seems to buckle.

The walls groan. Glass shatters. Through the broken windows, the pre-dawn air carries a scent that makes my predator nature recoil—ancient power, neither shadow nor light, but something older than both. Something that makes my new fangs ache with instinctive recognition.

Then we see it.

The shadow beast emerges from the darkness like a piece of night gaining sentience. Its form shifts between solid and smoke, larger than any corrupted creature we’ve encountered. But its eyes...

My enhanced vision catches every detail of those eyes—depthless pools of knowledge that no mere beast should possess. They fix on me with terrifying intelligence, and something in my blood, in my newly awakened predator nature, recognizes what we’re seeing.

This isn’t corruption given form.

This is their father.

The Eredar.

“Holy shit,” Leo breathes, his usual levity absent as his shadows curl defensively. “Is that...”

“Yes.” Bishop’s voice carries carefully controlled awe. “The original shadow beast. The one that-”

The Eredar’s attention never leaves me as it moves with impossible grace through the destruction spreading across campus. Each step it takes seems to ripple through reality itself. My predator instincts recognize the movement—not fleeing, but leading. Calling us to follow.

“Follow,” I command, already moving. My pack falls in behind me without hesitation, our bonds humming with shared purpose as we chase the massive beast through Shadow Locke’s disintegrating grounds.

The world warps around us with each tremor. Buildings twist into impossible shapes as the void’s corruption seeps upward. My enhanced senses catch every detail of wrongness—the way shadows move against light, how stone flows like water, the taste of reality unraveling on my tongue. My fangs remain extended, body coiled and ready despite knowing this isn’t a threat we can fight.

We’re not going to make it in time.

The knowledge burns like acid in my throat, but I push harder, faster. Behind me, I hear Leo’s breath coming in sharp bursts while Bishop mutters Guardian wards under his breath. Dorian’s frost spreads in our wake, trying to stabilize the deteriorating ground beneath our feet.

The Eredar leads us toward the cafeteria, each massive stride eating distance with prehistoric grace. We’re halfway there when the first wave hits.

Shadow beasts—dozens, then hundreds—pour from widening cracks in the earth. But these aren’t the corrupted ones we know how to fight. These are ancient things, creatures that existed in the void before time had meaning. They flee in blind panic, caring nothing for what stands in their way.

“Form up!” Bishop shouts, his Guardian marks blazing as he takes point. Years of training click into place—Leo and Dorian flanking while I guard our rear, the four of us moving as one unit through chaos.

The beasts pour around us in an endless tide. My enhanced vision catches details that make my predator nature recoil—bodies rippling between shadow and void-stuff, too many limbs moving in impossible geometries, eyes that have seen the birth of shadows themselves. The air reeks of ancient power and blind terror.

My fangs flash as I tear through anything that gets too close, predator instincts fully unleashed. Beside me, Leo’s shadows cut precise paths while Dorian’s frost freezes beasts mid-leap. Bishop’s Guardian magic carves us forward, but for every beast we put down, ten more emerge from the depths.

“There!” Leo’s voice cuts through the chaos. Through a gap in the fleeing creatures, I catch a glimpse of the cafeteria—or what’s left of it. The building warps like melting glass, its foundations crumbling into a widening maw of pure darkness.

The Eredar doesn’t slow. It moves with singular purpose toward that darkness, toward where I can feel Frankie’s bond growing fainter by the second. The connection stretches tissue-thin, like she’s moving further not just in distance, but in reality itself.

A beast larger than the others rears up before us, its maw gaping with void-dark hunger. Before any of us can react, the Eredar simply... looks at it. The beast freezes, then sinks into a bow so deep its head touches broken earth. My predator nature recognizes the display of dominance, the ancient hierarchy at play.

“Well that’s new,” Leo manages, his attempt at humor strained through our bond.

More beasts fall back as we pass, ancient instinct making them yield to their king. But not all of them. Some are too corrupted, too mad with fear to remember proper hierarchy. Those, we fight—my fangs and claws working in perfect sync with my pack’s powers.

The ground heaves again. A chasm splits the earth between us and the cafeteria, so deep my enhanced sight can’t find its bottom. Through it pulses waves of pure entropy—the void itself reaching up with hungry fingers. The scent of it burns my enhanced senses, wrong in a way that makes my predator nature want to flee.

And at its heart...

“No,” the word tears from my throat as I finally see them. Frankie and Finn float suspended in that impossible darkness, their powers already beginning to merge. Light and shadow spiral around them in a double helix of pure energy.

The Eredar roars—a sound that shakes the foundations of reality itself. Every beast in sight freezes, their forms quivering with recognition of their king’s command. My own predator nature responds instinctively to that display of absolute dominance.

But it’s not enough.

Nothing’s enough.

Through our bond, I feel the exact moment Frankie commits to sacrifice. Her love crashes through our connection—fierce and bright and absolute. Next to her, Finn’s light blazes to match her shadows, their combined power creating something that makes even my enhanced vision blur with its intensity.

“Frankie!” Leo’s scream holds decades of sunshine turned to desperation. He lunges forward, but Bishop catches him as the chasm widens. My own muscles coil with the need to leap after them, predator instincts warring with the knowledge that we can’t reach them.

“We have to-” Dorian’s voice cracks as his frost patterns fracture with stress. “There has to be a way to-”

But we all feel it through our bonds. The inevitability. The terrible weight of prophecy coming due. My fangs cut into my own lip as I fight back a roar of frustrated rage.

The Eredar moves before any of us can react. Its massive form flows like liquid night as it dives toward its children. In that moment, my enhanced vision catches something beneath the beast—the father’s desperate need to protect that mirrors my own predator instincts.

Frankie’s eyes meet mine across the void. Her lips form words I can read even at this distance: “Keep them safe.”

Then everything explodes.

Light and shadow detonate outward, their combined power turning the pre-dawn air to pure energy. The blast throws us back, but I fight to keep my eyes open, to witness every second. My enhanced sight catches fragments through the chaos:

The Eredar reaching its children.

Finn’s light merging perfectly with Frankie’s shadows.

Their father’s form wrapping around them both like living armor.

Three souls becoming one point of perfect, devastating balance.

Then...nothing.

The bond doesn’t break. Doesn’t snap like I feared. It just...stretches. Becomes gossamer-thin but unbreakable, like a thread connecting us to somewhere beyond normal space. My predator nature tracks that delicate connection, refusing to let go.

When the light fades and we can finally see again, the void has receded. The shadow beasts that survived mill around in confusion, their ancient forms already beginning to fade from our reality. The cracks in the earth slowly seal, leaving broken ground and shattered buildings as the only evidence of what happened.

But of Frankie, Finn, and their father...nothing remains.

“She’s not dead.” The words emerge as a growl, my fangs still extended as I fight back the predator’s need to hunt/find/claim. “The bond—I can still feel her. Feel them.”

“Somewhere between,” Bishop confirms, his tactical mind already working despite the grief tightening his voice. “Not in the void, but not in our reality either.”

“Then we find them.” Dorian’s frost spreads in searching patterns, more ordered now. More purposeful. “We research, we plan, we find a way.”

“No matter how long it takes,” Leo adds, his usual sunshine carrying an edge of steel.

I look at my pack—at Leo’s fierce determination, Bishop’s calculated fury, Dorian’s controlled intensity. Feel our bonds pulse with shared purpose. My predator nature recognizes their strength, their unwavering loyalty.

Above us, dawn breaks over a changed world. Around us, the ancient shadow beasts begin their slow fade from our reality, returning to whatever dark space birthed them. My enhanced senses catch every detail of their departure—the way their forms dissolve like smoke, the lingering scent of prehistoric power.

But somewhere, in a place between void and substance, between shadow and light, Frankie and Finn wait. Suspended in their father’s protection, held in perfect balance. My predator nature can still track that gossamer-thin connection, refusing to let it fade.

“We’re coming, Frankie.” The words emerge as a growl, my fangs catching the first light of morning as I make this promise to the empty air, to the stretched-thin bonds, to the very fabric of reality itself. “All of us. Together.”

My pack moves closer, their shadows and frost and Guardian marks merging with my own power. United. Determined. Unbreakable. Through our bonds, I feel their absolute conviction matching my own predator’s need to find our mate.

“Together,” they echo.

And somewhere beyond normal space, beyond time itself, I swear I feel our bonds pulse with acknowledgment.

With love.

With hope.

My fangs remain extended, body coiled and ready. We have a hunt ahead of us. And this time, we won’t stop until we find them.

No matter how long it takes.

No matter what stands in our way.

We’re coming.