Chapter 3The Weight of Trust

The rain slicked the cave entrance as Rissa stepped toward Lorna, her boots finding purchase on wet stone. Behind her, Dorian's hand clamped around her wrist.

"She could be leading us straight to Vance."

"And if she's not?" Rissa met his eyes in the dim light. "My sister doesn't have time for me to be careful."

Lorna said nothing, just watched them with the patient stillness of someone who'd spent decades learning to wait. Her lantern cast long shadows across her weathered face, and for a moment Rissa caught something flickering there—not malice, but the kind of exhaustion that came from carrying secrets too long.

Elias howled again. Closer. The sound bounced off the ravine walls, too many echoes to pinpoint.

"He's at the ravine's edge," Lorna said quietly. "You have ten seconds before he catches your scent."

Rissa made the choice for all of them, ducking into the tunnel mouth. The stone walls closed in immediately, the ceiling so low she had to hunch. Dorian followed, his breath a steady rhythm behind her, and Lorna pulled a canvas tarp across the entrance, sealing them in darkness.

They moved in silence for what felt like an hour, though the tunnel couldn't have run more than a quarter mile. Lorna's lantern threw just enough light to see the next step, nothing more. The walls wept moisture, and Rissa's wolf senses picked up the smell of rot and something metallic—old blood, soaked into the earth.

"You mapped this place," Dorian said, his voice barely a whisper. "When you were a cleaner."

"Every dead end. Every collapse. Every way in and out." Rissa touched the wall, feeling the vibration of distant footsteps through the stone. "There's a junction up ahead. Three passages. One leads to the infirmary."

"Your sister isn't in the infirmary," Lorna said without turning.

"Then where?"

Lorna stopped at a fork in the tunnel, three dark mouths opening before them. She set the lantern down, and the light caught the tremor in her hands—the same tremor Rissa had noticed at the cave.

"The Moonstone chamber. Vance moved her after the full moon. He knew you'd come for her."

Rissa's stomach dropped. The chamber was the most guarded place in the compound, a natural dome carved out by the meteorite's impact centuries ago. She'd only seen it once, during her initiation, and the memory still made her skin crawl—the way the stone pulsed like a living heart, the pressure of it pressing against her skull.

"How do you know about the journal?" Dorian stepped closer to Lorna, his body tense. "I found it in my brother's things. No one else could have seen it."

Lorna's jaw tightened. "Because I gave it to him."

The words hung in the damp air.

"Your brother came to me three years ago, asking questions about the Moonstone. He'd noticed the blight spreading through the forest, the way the pack's temper had grown shorter, the fights more violent." She picked at a thread on her sleeve, a nervous gesture that seemed out of place on someone so composed. "I told him what I knew. Helped him research. When he died, I thought the journal had been destroyed with him."

"But you didn't destroy it," Rissa said slowly. "You wanted someone to find it."

"I wanted *you* to find it." Lorna's eyes met hers, and there was something desperate in them. "You're the only one he ever turned who didn't lose herself. The only one who still sees the humans as people, not prey."

Dorian let out a bitter laugh. "And now you're handing us to Vance on a silver platter. What changed?"

Lorna's hands stilled. She looked at them both, then spoke so quietly Rissa had to strain to hear.

"Vance has my granddaughter. She's twelve years old, and she's never shifted. He's convinced the Moonstone can change her." The old woman's voice cracked. "He says if she can't shift by the next full moon, he'll feed her blood to the stone instead."

The words hit Rissa like a physical blow. She thought of her sister, chained in that chamber, pale and sick. Of the weight of being responsible for someone who couldn't protect themselves.

"So you're trading us for her," Dorian said flatly.

"I'm buying time." Lorna reached into her pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch, stained dark with age. She tossed it to Rissa. "Inside is a key. It opens a hidden passage behind the altar in the chamber. A way out, if you can reach it."

Rissa caught the pouch, feeling the weight of the metal inside. "And the frequency? The journal mentions a specific sound—"

"It works. I've tested it myself, during the feedings." Lorna's eyes darted nervously toward the tunnel behind them. "But it's not enough on its own. The Moonstone has been feeding for three hundred years. A single disruption won't break it."

"Then what will?"

Lorna opened her mouth to answer, but a grinding sound cut her off. The stone floor beneath their feet shifted, and a heavy door slid from the wall, slamming down between Rissa and Dorian, separating them.

"Dorian!"

She heard his muffled shout, then the sharp crack of his fist against the stone. Through the foot-thick barrier, she caught the sound of howls—close, too close.

"I'm sorry." Lorna's voice came from the other side, barely audible. "He's watching. He's always watching."

Then the howls were joined by footsteps, and Rissa understood.

The trap wasn't meant for her.

It was meant to separate her from Dorian, to isolate the one person who knew the frequency's secret.

She pressed her back against the cold stone, scanning the tunnel. It was barely four feet wide, the ceiling low enough to brush her hair. Not enough room to shift fully, but enough for a partial change—her claws extending, her senses sharpening.

Elias emerged from the darkness, two enforcers flanking him. His amber eyes gleamed in the dim light, and his lips peeled back to reveal teeth already lengthening.

"You always were too soft," he said, cracking his neck. "Should have killed the human. Should have killed you."

Rissa didn't answer. She watched his stance, the way he favored his left leg—an old injury from a fight she'd witnessed years ago, when he'd been the one tracking a rogue.

"I know about the tunnels," she said instead, her voice steady. "I mapped them, remember? Every dead end. Every collapse."

Elias snorted. "You know the compound's tunnels. These are older. Deeper."

"Are they?" She took a step back, feeling the wall behind her. "Then how did Lorna know about them?"

The flicker of uncertainty in his eyes was all she needed.

She moved.

Not toward him, but to the side, pressing herself against the wall where a narrow fissure split the stone. Elias lunged, claws extended, but she dropped low and rolled, using the tight space to slip past him. Her claws raked across his thigh as she moved, not deep enough to cripple, but enough to draw blood and attention.

The enforcers closed in, but she was already running, her heart pounding in her ears. She could hear Elias cursing behind her, the scrape of claws on stone as he gave chase.

The tunnel branched, and she took the left passage without hesitation, ducking under a low archway. The walls were closing in, the ceiling dropping, and she had to crawl on hands and knees through a section that had partially collapsed.

Behind her, Elias's howl echoed, joined by others.

She pressed on, her palms scraping against rough stone, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The tunnel opened into a wider chamber—an old water cistern, long dry, with a rusted grate in the ceiling that let in a sliver of moonlight.

And there, crouched in the shadows, was Dorian.

He looked up as she approached, his face bloodied, a gash across his forehead. "The frequency works," he said, his voice hoarse. "It stunned them for a few seconds. Long enough to get through the door."

"Lorna?"

"Gone. She was gone when the door opened."

Rissa helped him to his feet, checking his wound. It was shallow, already clotting. "She said Vance is watching. That he has her granddaughter."

Dorian's jaw tightened. "Doesn't make what she did right."

"No. But it makes it understandable." Rissa pulled out the leather pouch, running her thumb over the key inside. "She left us a way out."

From somewhere above them, a roar shook the ground—the unmistakable sound of an alpha's fury, amplified by the Moonstone's power.

Vance knew they'd escaped.

The ceiling trembled, and dust rained down on them.

"He's coming," Rissa said, the key cold in her palm. "We need to move."

Dorian nodded, his eyes hard. They plunged into the darkness together, the roar fading behind them as the tunnels swallowed them whole.

But the weight of Lorna's betrayal—and the secrets she'd hinted at—clung to Rissa like a second skin.

*The frequency works. But Vance knows about it.*

*And he's coming personally.*