The violent roar of the collapsing mountain died instantly. The moment Valerie tumbled backward through the threshold, the deafening sounds of rushing water, crashing stone, and the horrific screeches of the mutated Alpha King were severed as cleanly as a cut wire.She hit a solid, smooth floor, her body sliding across a surface that felt completely different from the rough limestone or cold iron of the fortress gutters. It was slick, pristine, and freezing cold.For a long moment, she lay there in the pitch blackness, her chest heaving as she dragged thin, dry air into her lungs. Her right hand was still weeping a steady stream of dark, silver-tinted blood onto the floor, the deep slice across her palm throbbing with a fierce, rhythmic agony. The sheer exhaustion of paying the blood price had drained her original apex aura down to a faint, flickering ember beneath her skin.Beside her in the dark, the ragged breathing of thirty terrified Omegas filled the silence."Alpha?" Leo's voic
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