All Chapters of THE OMEGA'S VOW: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

LYRA POV"You're limping.""I'm not limping.""You are. Left side. Since we crossed the ridge." Kael didn't slow down to make the point, just said it while he walked, which somehow made it land harder than if he'd stopped."It's nothing.""Show me at the next break."I didn't answer that, which he correctly read as agreement rather than refusal.We'd been walking since before dawn, the lodge already an hour behind us, Aelindra setting a pace at the front of the group that none of the trained Enforcers seemed to find easy either. Sixty miles, she'd said. She hadn't said how many of them were uphill.The terrain had changed twice already — forest, then open scrubland, now something rockier, older, ground that felt like it hadn't been walked in a long time except by whatever animals still lived out here undisturbed.No roads. No trails, even, not really. Aelindra moved like she was following something the rest of us couldn't see, occasionally stopping to press her palm flat against a bou

LYRA POV "How many," I said."Twenty. Maybe more." Gideon didn't lower his voice, but he didn't raise it either — flat, professional, the tone of a man doing math instead of panicking. "Coming up the slope in three groups. Spread wide."Kael was already moving, pulling Elijah and Rafael back from the ridge with two hard gestures, no words needed. The Enforcers fanned out along the rock line without being told, taking cover behind the same shelf of stone that had hidden us from the basin below.I looked at the narrow gap in the rock face. Then at the slope behind us, where shapes had started breaking free of the treeline, moving with the kind of coordination that didn't belong to animals or accident."We're boxed," I said."We're boxed," Aelindra agreed. She hadn't moved from the stone entrance, palm still hovering an inch from it like she expected it to change its mind."Can you open it," Kael said, dropping into a crouch beside her."I don't know what it's locked with.""The

LYRA POV"Stop clawing at it.""He's on the other side of that wall.""And you tearing your hands open on rock isn't going to bring him through it." Aelindra's voice came steady out of the dark, closer now than it had been. Her hand closed around my wrist, gentle but immovable, pulling me back from the stone. "The tether's muffled, not gone. That matters. Hold onto that instead of the wall."I made myself stop.My palms were raw where I'd scraped them, and in the absolute black I couldn't see the damage, only feel it, stinging and useless. I pressed the heel of one hand against my sternum instead, over the place where the tether sat, and made myself breathe until the muffled warmth there stopped feeling like something slipping away and started feeling like something I could actually track.Still there. Quieter. Not cold."What's muffling it," I said."I don't know." Aelindra's hand left my wrist. Somewhere close by, fabric moved — she was doing something, though I couldn't see what. "

LYRA"That's the passage," I said. "That's the way we came in.""I know what it is." Aelindra was already moving, the pale light in her palm flaring brighter, throwing our shadows hard against walls that suddenly felt a great deal smaller than they had a minute ago.Rhosyn's grip hadn't left her wrist. "I told you. They know you're here.""How.""I don't know how. I've never known how they know anything." Rhosyn pulled herself up the wall, legs unsteady beneath her in a way that made my chest hurt to watch, and for the first time I understood what fifteen years without walking properly does to a body that should have been healing itself the entire time. The suppression here ran deeper than the facility. Deep enough to stop even the regeneration."Corin," I said. "Can he walk?""If someone carries him through the first steps. His legs work. His mind doesn't tell them to." Rhosyn looked toward him, still fixed on that same unmoving point past everyone's shoulder, and something in her fa

KAEL"How far to the tree line?""Half mile." Elijah didn't look up from Gideon, one hand still pressed hard against the packed wound. "He won't make it walking.""He's not walking."I got an arm under Gideon's shoulders before he could argue about it, and he was too far gone to try very hard — jaw clenched, breath coming shallow and fast, sweat standing out along his hairline despite the cold."I can walk," he said anyway."You can shut up," Rafael said, taking his other side one-armed, his own wrapped forearm held stiff against his chest. "Save the breath for staying alive."We moved as a group, slower than I wanted, faster than the wounded could really manage. Rhosyn kept pace on her own, refusing help twice before finally accepting Aelindra's arm on the third offer, and Corin walked between Lyra and Darius, silent, his steps mechanical and even like something following a rhythm nobody else could hear.I watched Lyra as much as I watched the terrain. She'd gone quiet since the basi