Chapter 8The Stone’s Hunger

The current dragged them through darkness, the water pulsing with that sickly glow. Rissa's lungs burned. Her fingers scraped rock, catching nothing solid. Beside her, Kellan's kicks grew weaker, his leg dragging like dead weight.

*You're drowning. Let me help you breathe.*

The Moonstone's voice slid through her skull like oil. Warm. Inviting. She imagined Elara's face—safe, alive, *free*—and the image bloomed behind her eyes as if the stone had plucked it from her memory.

*I can give you that. Just stop fighting.*

Rissa's chest ached for air. Her vision blurred at the edges. She was going to die down here, swallowed by a mountain that wanted to wear her like a skin.

Ahead, a pinprick of light. Not the glow of the stone—something different. Cold. Silver. *Moonlight.*

Dorian grabbed her arm and pulled, kicking harder. The current shifted, pushing them upward. Rissa broke the surface with a gasp, coughing water, her lungs screaming. She was in a narrow vertical shaft, the walls slick with moss. Above, maybe thirty feet up, a rusted grate framed a circle of stars.

*Beautiful, aren't they? I could pluck them for you.*

She ignored the voice and dragged herself onto a ledge barely wide enough for two people. Dorian hauled himself up beside her, chest heaving. Then he reached down for Kellan.

The older wolf's head broke the surface. His face was gray, his eyes glassy. When he tried to lift his arm, it barely moved. The corruption had spread up his thigh, the skin mottled and hard, gleaming like polished granite.

"I can't—" Kellan's voice cracked. "It's in my *bones*."

Rissa looked at Dorian. She saw the calculation in his eyes—the cold arithmetic of survival.

"We're not leaving him."

"Rissa—"

"He knew this was coming." She grabbed Kellan's wrist. The skin was warm. Still alive. "He came anyway. For *us*. We don't abandon pack."

Kellan's lips twitched. Almost a smile. "You're not pack. You're better than that."

The tunnel behind them groaned. Rocks splashed into the water. Vance was still coming, and the stone was still pressing, still *hungry*.

*Leave him. He's already mine.*

The words came not as a whisper but as certainty, planting themselves in her gut like a seed. Rissa shook her head, but the thought lingered: *Wouldn't it be easier?*

Dorian grabbed the rusted rungs set into the shaft wall. "I'll go first. Pass him up to me."

*No. You'll climb together. You'll never make it.*

The stone was right. The shaft was narrow, the rungs slick with moisture. Carrying Kellan would slow them to a crawl. But the alternative—

"Dorian." Kellan's voice was quiet. "Look at me."

The beta's eyes had cleared. For a moment, he was himself again—the tired, stubborn wolf who'd led them through tunnels and lies and the belly of the mountain. His hand found Rissa's, squeezed once.

"Don't let it take you the way it took me."

"Kellan—"

"It wants a vessel. A strong one. Someone who can *contain* it." His gaze flicked to her chest, where the Moonstone's glow pulsed faintly through her wet shirt. "Someone like you."

Rissa's blood went cold.

The stone's offer in the cavern. The way it had shown her Elara's face, her sister's *pain*, as if the images were gifts. It wasn't trying to kill her.

It was trying to *recruit* her.

Kellan's eyes rolled white. His hand clamped around her wrist with impossible strength, fingers digging into bone. When he spoke, the voice wasn't his—it was layered, echoing, the sound of stone grinding against stone.

*Hello, little wolf.*

Rissa tried to pull away, but his grip was iron. Dorian grabbed her shoulders, but Kellan's other hand shot out, snagging Dorian's ankle, yanking him off the rungs. Dorian crashed onto the ledge, gasping.

*I've been watching you since you stumbled into my cave. The way you resist. The way you* ache*.* The possessed wolf tilted his head, and his smile was wrong—too wide, the teeth too sharp. *You're the first hunt in a century that actually interests me.*

"Let him go." Rissa's voice shook, but she held his gaze. "He's not yours."

*Everything is mine. The pack. The mountain. This body.* Kellan's free hand touched his own chest, the stone-skin spreading up his neck. *I have claimed this one. But he is* weak*. You, though...* The white eyes fixed on her, and she felt the weight of something ancient, something *patient*, pressing against her mind. *You would last so much longer.*

Dorian lunged, but Kellan moved faster—his leg should have been useless, but the stone had made it something else. He kicked, and Dorian flew back, hitting the shaft wall with a crack.

Rissa's hand found the knife at her belt. The same knife she'd used to cut Dorian free days ago. She pulled it free, blade catching the moonlight from above.

*You won't kill him. You're too soft.*

She drove the blade into Kellan's forearm.

He didn't scream. The stone skin split, and black ichor wept from the wound, but his grip didn't loosen. Instead, he laughed—a sound like rocks tumbling down a slope.

*Good. You have teeth after all.*

Rissa twisted the blade. The thing inside Kellan howled—not in pain, but in *delight*—and the grip on her wrist finally broke. She stumbled back, pulling Dorian to his feet.

Kellan's body convulsed. For a split second, his eyes cleared, and she saw him—the real Kellan, trapped behind the white. His mouth moved, forming a single word:

*Run.*

Then the stone took him again. He lunged, but Dorian was already pulling her up the rungs, his hand bloody, his breath ragged. They climbed as Kellan's claws scraped the rock below, as the possessed wolf howled with a voice that shook the mountain.

The howl followed them up the shaft, through the grate, into the cold night air.

---

They collapsed in a moonlit clearing, lungs burning, skin raw. The forest stretched around them, silent and still. No sign of pursuit. No sound but their own ragged breathing.

Rissa rolled onto her back and stared at the stars. They looked so small. So far away. Nothing like the vast, crushing presence she'd felt in the mountain.

"We left him." Her voice was hollow.

Dorian didn't answer. He was staring at the treeline, his hand pressed to his ribs where he'd hit the wall. She could see him cataloging injuries, resources, escape routes—the journalist's mind, still working, even now.

"He's gone," Dorian finally said. "That thing in the mountain—it's not his body anymore."

Rissa knew he was right. She also knew she'd never forgive herself.

She sat up, and her gaze caught on something in the distance. A glow, pulsing soft and steady, like a heartbeat made of light.

The pack compound.

And on the roof of the central lodge, silhouetted against the Moonstone's glow, stood a figure. Broad-shouldered. Unmoving. *Waiting.*

Vance.

He saw them. She felt it—the way his gaze found her across the miles, across the trees, as if the stone had whispered her location. His hand rose, not in greeting, but in gesture.

Behind him, another figure was dragged onto the roof. Small. Frail. Her sister's red hair caught the moonlight like a wound.

*Elara.*

The Moonstone's voice returned, soft as silk, wrapping around her heart:

*Come and get her.*

Rissa's claws bit into her palms. Dorian's hand found hers, warm and steady, pulling her back from the edge.

"We'll get her back."

She wanted to believe him. But the stone's glow was bright in the distance, and she could still feel Kellan's scream echoing in her bones, and she knew—with a certainty that settled like a stone in her chest—that walking into that compound meant walking into a trap.

And she was going to do it anyway.