6

Chapter 6

Yvonne pov

“Lockdown! Seal every exit now! Every staff member in the main hall in the next two minutes!”

Julian's voice cut through the estate loudly, sending cold chills down almost everyone.

This is the first time I'll be hearing him speak this way. He didn't sound like the usual composed strategist who usually spent hours staring at files.

He sounded different, something almost close to panic.

The guards moved in all directions, their boots pounding heavily against the tiled marble floor.

Somewhere down the hall, one of the staff muffled sobs carried through the hall. She probably didn't understand what was happening yet but knew something terrible had happened.

I stood in the middle of the room, still in my silver ceremonial robes, my body frozen in shock, my mind refusing to process the empty cribs right in front of me.

“Yvonne.” I felt my mother's warm hands closed around my shoulders, turning me to face her properly.

Elara's eyes had gone glassy from tears but she kept her voice steady, the way I imagine she must have learnt to keep it steady through decades of crisis as a Luna. “Look at me. Not at the crib, Focus on me.”

My lips trembled as the words choked out of my throat.

“They are gone, Mother. They are—”

“They are alive.” She gently interrupted me, giving my shoulder a small squeeze. “You are their mother, you can feel them. Use the thread between you right now. Close your eyes and reach for them, let them show you where they are.”

“But I don't know how to—”

“You don't need to learn how to do it, just let it happen. Stop fighting the fear of losing them, instead let the fear lead you. Listen to what is underneath it.”

She was right, I didn't need to learn it, just the way I had recognized my father immediately I saw him across the hospital ward.

I closed my eyes, my heart beating loudly in my chest and I forced my breathing to become slow despite how every instinct in my head kept screaming at me to run, to search for them, to do something instead of just panicking.

Thankfully, my wolf understood the situation better than I do. She had been trying to keep her cool while I found a way to connect to my babies.

Under my ribs, the thread pulled, almost painfully and I felt my wolf growling.

Everything around me went completely still.

The shouting, the loud boots pounding against tiled marbles, my mother's hands which were still gripping my shoulder.

Everything was replaced by darkness which didn't feel like darkness at the same time.

My own eyes were still closed but I was seeing through something else now, some borrowed sense that didn't belong to my own eyes.

It looked blurred, then faint before it became clearer.

A place that looked like a narrowed tunnel with stone walls that looked rough and uneven on both sides.

Everything moved unsteadily, jostling from side to side like I was being carried by someone.

Just then, something dark and big passed.

It was a wolf.

It didn't look like any normal wolf, it was much bigger than a normal wolf should be, and completely black all from its nose down to its tail, moving without making a sound.

Then, something small and bright dangles into view. It was a pendant made out of silver, hanging from a chain.

I couldn't properly see the crest on it because of how it caught a little bit of light from somewhere.

I recognized the pendant almost immediately.

It was the same pendant I had seen dangling from the stranger's hand on the hospital rooftop the day we had left with the twins after I had given birth.

What is this?

Fear crashed into me at once, I felt my wolf stirring restless, my pulse spiked and my vision broke apart, shattering like glass.

My eyes flew open immediately. My knees couldn't hold my weight and I nearly fell.

My mother caught me before I could fully hit the floor.

“What did you see?” She asked, her voice raised with concern.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my uneven breathing but I was still too shaken to do so.

“I saw stone walls.” I swallowed, trying to catch my breath. “I saw a tunnel and a very big black wolf. It didn't look normal. And the pendant…” I paused. My mom gave me a little nod to continue. “I've seen the pendant before on the hospital rooftop the day we left. There was a stranger on the roof—”

Elara's face went pale, but she was still holding onto me. “Don't worry dear, we will work with what we have.” she assured me, her voice warm.

Across the room, my father lowered his device. He had been speaking into it for what felt like an hour but had only been ten minutes.

“Everything leads back to a dead end.” His face was grim as he continued speaking. “Every method we have for tracking them has failed. Whoever this person is, they've really prepared themselves in hiding their tracks.”

“Father, I saw a tunnel.” I muttered, forcing myself to stand up straight. “an underground with old stone. Someone was carrying them.”

My father's jaw tightened instantly. “There are tunnels under this mansion.” He murmured. “They were sealed decades ago.” He said, and he was already moving towards the door. “Gideon and Julian, come with me.”

They stepped out and I followed behind them, holding my silver robe upward to prevent me from falling.

Loud footsteps of me, my parents, my brothers and a handful of guards echoed loudly on the ground.

I didn't even know a stairway leading below the mansion existed until now.

The deeper we went, the colder the air of the tunnel became and the slower the walls changed from being smooth to being rough and old.

It looked exactly the same as the one from my vision.

The thought sent my heart beating, fear and anticipation. Would they still be here?

My babies, they were still so tiny.

I could still feel the thread in my chest,making me believe we were in the right direction, pulling and growing tighter the further we walked like it was about to snap from anticipation.

Just then, we hit a dead end.

The tunnel stopped.

Before us, where the passage should've continued, there were only smooth bricks with no crack or anything suggesting it was trespassed.

Gideon reached out and pressed his palm flat against it, then pulled back sharply, hissing through his teeth.

“It’s hot,” he said.

Julian crouched beside it, studying the surface without touching it.

Faint lines were visible if I looked closely, almost like veins running just beneath the wall's surface.

“This isn't construction of any kind. Someone sealed this with magic.”

“That's not possible,” Gideon scoffed, looking slightly pissed. “Sealing a stone like that takes real power. That's not some minor trick. I thought magic was banned years ago.”

“I thought so too,”Julian agreed.

My father said nothing. He simply stared at the wall, his expression unreadable, though I noticed his hand had curled slowly into a fist at his side.

I pressed my own palm against the stone, feeling the last traces of warmth fading beneath my fingers, and the thread in my chest pulled harder, straining toward my children on the other side of a barrier none of us could simply break through.

“Whoever did this,” I said quietly, “has to be close by.”

“Julian is right, This isn't just any kind of magic and whoever did this is someone close by, someone who knows more about the silvercrest.”

He turned to look at each of us and I saw something new in his expression. It wasn't guilt, it was fear.

I stared at the sealed wall as the last silver veins disappearing back into ordinary rock, and felt the same cold certainty settle deeper into my chest.

Whoever had done this weren't strangers.

They were one of us.