Semua Bab The Bear's Revenge: Bab 81 - Bab 90

The shape stepped fully into the light. It wasn’t one of the Hunters. Kiera knew that immediately—felt it in the wrongness pressing against the edges of her mind. Hunters carried fear, hunger, control. This presence was something colder. Quieter. Like a thought held too long without a body. The faint glow from the chemical lights along the corridor caught pale skin stretched too tightly, seams of scar tissue crisscrossing its throat and arms like careless stitching. Its eyes were colorless, reflecting light without truly seeing it. Not blind—but listening. Waiting. Ronan moved half a step in front of Kiera without taking his gaze off the creature. His hand tightened around hers just enough to remind her he was there—solid, breathing, real. Back, he sent through the bond. Slow. She didn’t argue. Didn’t pull away. She shifted back until the rough sto

Smoke rose over the treeline like a signal flare the island hadn’t meant to send. Ronan smelled it first—char and oil and fear, curling hot through the damp air. He slowed instinctively, lifting a hand as Kiera stumbled to a stop beside him on the narrow rise that overlooked the town the humans called Grizzly. Dawn was trying to break, thin and anemic, but the light caught on drifting ash and turned the sky a bruised gray. Something had gone wrong while they were underground. Below them, the town burned. Not all of it. Not yet. But enough that the wrongness was unmistakable: a warehouse roof coughing black smoke, a dockside building glowing from within, streetlamps shattered and blinking uselessly. Sirens wailed in broken loops, echoing off water and rock. The bay was choked with a low fog that made everything feel closer—and more dangerous. Kiera swayed. Ronan caught her elbow without thinkin

The message arrived at dusk. It didn’t come by sound or signal, not in any way humans would have traced easily. It came instead as a pressure inside Kiera’s skull—precise, surgical, unmistakable. She stiffened mid‑step. Ronan felt it instantly. He caught her arm as she swayed, his grip steady but gentle. “Kiera?” Her eyes unfocused, pupils dilating as if she were staring straight into a light no one else could see. They want to bargain. The words crawled across the bond like ice. Ronan’s jaw tightened. “Who?” Hale.And someone else. That second presence lingered—cold, watchful, patient. Not frantic like the Hunters that had chased her before. This one waited. The bears had retreated deep into the forest, far from the town, choosing a narrow ravine w

The darkness swallowed him whole. Ronan’s presence—his anchor, his certainty—vanished from Kiera’s mind in a single, brutal snap, like a cord cut under tension. “No—” The word tore through her silently, her body lurching toward the pit’s edge. Nothing answered. No heartbeat in her chest that wasn’t her own. No steady weight at her back. No fierce, burning presence braided through her thoughts. Just emptiness. Hale’s voice drifted across the quarry, smooth and satisfied. “You see,” he said. “This is why I planned ahead.” Kiera sank to her knees, dirt scraping her palms. The air above the pit shimmered faintly—some kind of dampening field, metallic and wrong. She could feel it pressing against her mind like a lid slammed shut. She reached again. Ronan. Nothing. The Hunt

Ronan tore through the last of the smoke like a living storm. The chamber buckled under the force of his arrival—stone cracking, cables snapping loose, alarms screaming as the air pressure shifted. He landed in a crouch at the threshold, claws gouging deep grooves into the concrete, fur bristling with restrained violence. “Kiera!” Her name ripped from him—out loud this time—and the sound cut through the shriek of machinery like a blade. She was there. Strapped to the chair at the center of the room. Pinned. A device hovered over her skull, its needle buried far deeper than it had any right to be, glowing with hungry light. Her body arched against the restraints, muscles locked, eyes blown wide and burning white. Energy bled off her in waves sharp enough to sting his skin. Ronan felt it like pressure behind his ribs. The bond.