All Chapters of BARBARIAN: The Mad Alpha Is My Mate.: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

The old man's warning settled over the clearing with crushing finality.No one spoke.The crackle of a dying campfire somewhere among Morwen's soldiers became the only sound brave enough to break the silence. Even the wolves remained motionless, their ears turned toward the western mountains as though listening for footsteps no human could yet hear.Alvar was the first to recover."If they're coming to kill us," he said, "then standing here arguing only makes their job easier."Grant nodded in agreement."For once, that's the smartest thing you've said all day."Morwen's gaze shifted between the two men before settling on the old man."You expected them.""I hoped I was wrong.""But you prepared.""I prepared for the possibility."The old man planted his staff firmly into the earth."They have remained hidden for generations. They intervene only when they believe the balance can no longer be restored."Grant folded his arms."And who exactly decides that?""They do.""I gathered that.

The cliffs moved.That was the first wrong thing. Rock didn't move, not like that, not in a ripple that ran from one ridge to the other in the space of a breath. Alvar's hand went to his hilt before his mind caught up to what he was seeing.Keepers.Dozens of them. Maybe more. Lining every ledge above the pass, cloaks the color of wet stone, utterly still."Don't," Caierre said beside him, low."I wasn't going to.""You were thinking about it."He was. He stopped thinking about it.The silence stretched. No war horns, no arrows loosed as warning shots, nothing. Just hundreds of eyes on them from above, patient in a way that felt worse than an attack would have.Morwen's hand found the pommel of her own blade. "This isn't a patrol.""No," Grant murmured. "It's a wall."The old man—Ossen, though nobody called him that to his face anymore—stood very still, staring up at the ridgeline like he was trying to count them and losing track.Then one of them stepped forward. A man, tall, gray at

*Caierre went down like something had cut his strings.Alvar didn't remember deciding to move. One moment he was three feet away, blade up, watching the silver chain bite into Caierre's chest—the next the ground was under his own knees too, his sword gone from his hand, his whole body folding in on itself like it had forgotten how to stand.It didn't hurt like a wound. There was no blade in him, no chain around him. It hurt like something being *pulled*—wrenched sideways out of his chest, raw and sudden, leaving a hole where it had been."Alvar!"Somewhere close. Grant's voice, or Morwen's, he couldn't tell, the world had gone thin and ringing.He got one hand flat against the stone. Forced his eyes to Caierre, three feet away, curled around himself, breathing in short broken gasps."What—" Alvar's own voice came out wrecked. "What did they—""I don't know," Caierre gritted out. "I don't—it's not me, it's—"He didn't finish. He didn't need to. Alvar felt it too, the same tearing pull,

The tunnels swallowed the sound of the pass behind them, and for the first time in what felt like hours, Caierre could hear himself breathe.They'd run for it the moment the Keepers fell back—Grant leading, half-carrying Alvar for the first stretch until his legs remembered how to work, Morwen and the old man covering the rear, the wolves fanning out ahead into the dark like they already knew the way. The opening had been half-hidden behind a fall of scree, a black seam in the mountainside that Caierre wouldn't have looked at twice if the old man hadn't gone straight for it like he'd known it was there all along."How did you know—" Alvar started, still hoarse."I didn't. I hoped." The old man ducked under the low lip of stone, and the moment he crossed the threshold, something in the air changed—pressure, maybe, or the quality of the silence. "Wards. Old ones. The Keepers won't follow past this point. Not gladly, anyway.""Why not?""Because whatever built these tunnels didn't build

The howl was still rolling off the cliffs when the world dropped out from under him.Not the pass this time. Not the Keepers, not Alvar's hand tightening on his arm, not the ring of blades still frozen mid-motion above them. All of it went thin and far away, like sound through deep water, and then it was gone entirely, and he was somewhere else.*Vaelor.*He knew it instantly now, the way you know a room you've stood in a hundred times even with your eyes closed. But this Vaelor was different from the last two he'd seen—no torchlit hall, no table, no forbidden ritual pressing dark magic into a screaming man. This Vaelor was outside, under open sky, grass instead of stone, and it was *full*.Wolves. Dozens of them, more than dozens, packs he could somehow tell apart by the way they held themselves even though he'd never seen a single one of them before in his life. They'd gathered in a wide green hollow ringed by low hills, and there was nothing violent in the air at all—no tension, no