MasukTraci’s POV The room had never felt this heavy. Nobody was talking about plans anymore. Nobody was trying to figure out another way to save Sarah. We’d exhausted every option we had. Zayden and the others had searched until there was nothing left to search. Raiden had pushed his men until they physically couldn’t go any farther. And they had still come home empty-handed. Sarah lay exactly where she’d been for days, looking as peaceful as if she were simply taking a nap. I wished that were true. I sat beside her bed, gently holding her hand between both of mine. It was still warm. That somehow made this even harder. Around the room, everyone had settled into their own quiet corner. Raiden sat in a chair with his elbows resting on his knees. His head hung low, his hands clasped together as he stared at the floor. The fight had finally left him. Zayden leaned against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes never left Sarah, but I knew his mind was still searching f
Raiden’s POV “No!” The word ripped out of my throat before I could stop it. I lunged toward the edge of the marsh, my boots sinking into the soaked ground as I watched the last surviving egg sac disappear beneath the black water. Tiny ripples spread across the surface before the swamp swallowed every trace of it. “No!” I shouted again. “Get in there!” The warrior who had slipped didn’t hesitate. Ignoring the mud coating his clothes, he splashed straight into the marsh where the egg sac had fallen. Another warrior joined him without waiting for an order. Both of them dropped to their knees and shoved their arms beneath the murky water, feeling through thick mud, rotted branches, and tangled roots. “Find it!” I barked. “It’s got to be there!” Every muscle in my body was tight. I couldn’t stand there and do nothing. I stepped into the marsh beside them, ignoring the cold water soaking through my boots. The mud clung to my feet, making every step feel heavier than the last. “I had
Zayden’s POV The private jet touched down just as the first light of morning broke across the horizon. The landing gear bounced once before settling against the uneven field Kael had spotted on the satellite images. By the time the engines shut down, every second that had passed since Sarah was bitten weighed heavier on my shoulders. Forty-eight hours. That number refused to leave my mind. The cabin door opened, and the damp morning air rolled inside. I stepped out first, my boots sinking slightly into the soft ground. The field stretched out in every direction, bordered by towering trees draped with hanging moss. Beyond them, a blanket of fog rested over the wetlands, so thick it swallowed everything more than a few yards inside. Nothing about this place felt welcoming. It was quiet. The air smelled of stagnant water, and decaying vegetation. Even the breeze seemed reluctant to move through the trees. The fog drifted lazily across the surface of the marsh, twisting around broken
Zayden’s POV The words Frederick said kept replaying in my mind. A supernatural anchor. Trapped between consciousness and sleep. It wasn't just poison, it was a cage. And Sarah was inside it. I looked over at Kael, who was sitting in front of his laptop, his face illuminated by the screen. The room was quiet, everyone lost in their own head, but we couldn't afford to be paralyzed. “Kael,” I said, my voice cutting through the silence. “Get on your laptop. We need to find everything we know about that spider. What can you pull up? Where can we find it? The lab tech said they originate from one specific region.” Kael didn’t hesitate. His fingers started flying across the keyboard, the rhythmic tapping the only sound in the room as he dove into the supernatural archives. The rest of us stood frozen, our eyes on him. This was our only way forward. Traci sat by Sarah's bed, her hand a constant, comforting presence on her arm. Raiden was a statue of coiled tension, his eyes fixe
Traci’s POV Ryker had been back less than an hour, and somehow the answers he’d brought home had only left us with more questions. The evidence from the cave lay spread across the table. Photographs. Maps. A few personal belongings. Everything had been carefully gathered before the cave was destroyed, yet none of it answered the question that mattered most. “Do you think he was even there?” Roman asked, his attention fixed on the stuff that was scattered across the tabletop. Corbin folded his arms across his chest as he studied one of the pictures Ryker had taken inside the cave. “If Wyatt was inside when the charges went off, there isn’t enough left of him to identify.” “And if he wasn’t?” Ronan asked. “Then he’s still out there.” Corbin shrugged his shoulders. I picked up one of the pictures Ryker had taken before leaving the cave. It showed the room where the walls had been covered with pictures of me. Even though I’d only glanced at them before, seeing them frozen in a ph
Ryker’s POV By the time we reached the cave system, the sun had already disappeared behind the trees, leaving the forest dark enough that our flashlights became the only real source of light around us. I had brought enough men to search the entire area without spreading us so thin that we couldn’t respond if something went wrong. Every man carried a flashlight, and several had headlamps secured around their foreheads so they could keep both hands free once we entered the caves. I stopped at the first opening and swept my light across the rocks blocking it. The entrance wasn’t completely natural-looking. There were stones packed across the opening, some of them large enough that it would have taken more than one person to move them. The farther I looked, the more deliberate the blockage seemed. It wasn’t a landslide. The rocks were sitting in a way that made it look like somebody had placed them there. “Clear it,” I ordered. Several of the men moved forward and started shifting t







