Page 62 of Fated Wolf's Redemption

Sophia stumbles back a step, her lips parting, eyes wide. But not in fear.

She sees me. Fully. And then she shifts, too.

Her form twists in a burst of crackling electricity, lightning skimming her skin like war paint before her body shifts down. Mist and light spiral around her, limbs elongating in a surge of precision and power. Where I’m shadow and smoke, she’s fire and fury. Silver eyes. Silver fur. Lightning caught in a body that never should’ve held it.

She lands beside me with her chest low and ears forward. One breath. We run.

Max swears behind us, but I don’t hear the rest of it. I leap from the corridor into the chamber, just as the first of the gate-born creatures cracks through the windglass and hits the stone.

It moves like it doesn’t know how its body works yet—jerky, limbs folding wrong—but it’s fast. Twice the size of a normal wolf, with slick gray skin where fur should be and spines down its back like broken glass. No eyes. Just hollows.

It hisses, and a second one slithers out behind it.

Sophia’s growl cuts through the air like a warning shot. The lead creature turns. Recognizes her. Or me. Or both. It doesn’t matter.

She charges first. I flank left.

The creature leaps—awkward, off-balance—but it’s strong. Too strong. Sophia crashes into its side with her full weight, lightning exploding from her shoulders, and itscreams. Not in pain. Not like prey. It screams like something that remembers what it once was—and hates what it’s become.

I hit the second one low, driving it back across the glyphs. It claws at the floor for purchase, but I don’t give it a chance. My jaws snap around its foreleg and I pull. The bone doesn’t break. There’s no bone. Just... tissue. Muscle fused to something darker.

A blast of light sears the wall behind me. Max.

He’s covering our backs. Kylie is moving behind him, warding glyphs in her hands, activating one after the other asfast as she can scrawl them. She’s sweating. Swearing. But she’s not slowing down.

Sophia shoves the first creature back, then pivots, kicking off the stone in a flash of silver and impact. The second one hisses again, then lunges. I meet it midair. We roll, my claws locked into the back of its shoulders, driving it into the rock with a sickening slap.

It stops moving… just for a second. Then its body jerks—not of its own power.

The glyphs flare. Sophia barks once—a short warning call.

I look at the gate. The windglass is gone. Shattered. Behind it, something moves.

Not a creature. Not yet. Just a presence.

The scent hits me last. Not blood. Not death. Old magic. Foul and endless.

A piece of something else is pressing through. Not a hand. Not a claw. Just a shadow. But the surrounding stone fractures in its wake.

Max turns to me, eyes wide. “They’re coming through in pieces.”

Sophia snarls and leaps again, dragging the first creature toward the dais. Her lightning scorches the floor, burning glyph trails into the stone. The creature twitches. Then seizes. Then stops.

Dead—and not just partly, but in its entirety.

I brace beside her. My form solid, mist curling around my paws, ears flat against my skull.

We have seconds. Maybe less.

Kylie yells from behind us. “They’re not stopping! The glyphs are summoning more!”

Sophia turns, eyes meeting mine. I see the question there. Can we hold the line? I give her what she needs—one slow nod.

We stand shoulder to shoulder in the chamber where Lina turned herself into a gate.

The next wave is coming.

The second wave crashes through the gate with a scream that rattles the stone beneath my paws.

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