Page 132 of The Hyena’s Guardian

Red light exploded upward around them. The King roared in fury as the seal finally opened fully beneath the fractured stone. And for the first time, Matt saw what the mountain had truly been containing. Not merely power. Hunger.

The abyss beneath the throne moved like something alive trying to drag itself upward through the fracture while black mineral spiraled violently around the King’s body.

“Baptiste!” Theron shouted. “Detonate it!”

The King grabbed him instantly.

Matt felt the panic hit the bond hard enough to nearly stop his heart.

The ancient wolf locked one hand around Theron’s throat and drove him backward toward the exposed seal while the mountain screamed around them. “You are mine,” the King snarled.

Theron’s claws tore across the King’s chest. “Never.”

“NOW!” Vale screamed.

Baptiste hit the detonator.

The stabilizers ruptured the heart seal in a column of blinding red-white light, collapsing the chamber inward and tearing the bridges apart.

Matt saw Theron disappear beneath collapsing stone and erupting light at the exact moment the King screamed.

Then the entire throne chamber gave way beneath them. The bridges shattered apart as the abyss swallowed the collapsing platform, dragging the throne, the King, and the dying seal downward while the mountain began tearing itself apart around them.

The blast tore the hyena shape out of him. Vale’s team dragged Matt into the evacuation passage while he bled, half-dressed and human again, fighting every hand that tried to pull him away from the throne chamber.

Matt barely remembered escaping as everything became noise, falling stone, heat, and darkness while Vale’s teams dragged the survivors toward the surface. The mountain tore itself apart behind them.

By the time they stumbled into the night, half the mountain had already collapsed into itself. Smoke and black dust rolled upward through the shattered peaks while distant explosions echoed beneath the earth.

The bond was gone.

Not weakened.

Not distant.

Gone so completely that the absence of it hurt more than any wound the mountain had left behind.

For one impossible heartbeat, Matt couldn't even tell whether Theron still existed.

Vale caught his arm before he could turn back toward the collapsing entrance.

“You can’t go back in there.”

Matt tore free. “He’s still alive.”

“There is nothing left alive in there.”

For one horrifying heartbeat, Matt believed her.

Then something flickered at the edge of his awareness, weak and buried beneath pain and stone but unmistakable. The bond was still there. Relief and panic struck together as it hit Matt that Theron was alive.

Matt turned toward the ruins and started running before Vale could stop him.

“Matt!” she shouted behind him.

He ignored her and forced his way back into the tunnels as smoke and dust swallowed the passageways. Loose stone crashed through the fractured corridors overhead, but the faint pull of the bond guided him deeper. He followed it blindly until movement appeared through the dust.

A figure staggered out of the darkness. Theron.