Page 117 of The Hyena’s Guardian

The others continued moving around him. Vale barked orders near the rear bridge while agents repositioned across the fractured platforms surrounding the abyss. Weapons clicked. Stone groaned beneath the strain of failing chains. The chamber remained alive with noise.

Beneath it all, the King’s voice remained inside Theron’s head, intimate and invasive, woven directly into his thoughts rather than echoing through the mountain.

Theron kept his expression neutral as he surveyed the throne chamber. The bridges trembled beneath the shifting mountain while deep red light pulsed from the abyss in time with the breathing beneath the throne.

He did not answer. That was the first rule.

The King used attention, instinct, and emotional reaction as openings. Answering gave him purchase. Theron had learned that centuries ago, when the whispers first crept into his thoughts during the final years before the mountain was sealed.

Another chain groaned somewhere below.

Matt moved closer, and Theron sensed him before their shoulders touched. The bond tightened between them, alive in a way that still unsettled him, and certainty settled beneath Theron’s ribs. Matt was alive, close enough to reach, and still safe.

The feeling came too quickly and too deeply, bypassing control entirely, and the King noticed.

You protect him more fiercely than the blood that made you.

Theron gave no outward reaction. Discipline mattered more than ever because the King pressed constantly against any thought strong enough to expose weakness.

Theron had begun noticing the pattern several chambers earlier. The King pushed hardest whenever his thoughts lingered on Matt, particularly when the bond carried something deeper than simple awareness. Emotion gave the ancient presence something to follow. Attachment strengthened the connection, and hope made it dangerous.

The presence beneath the mountain understood rage and grief. It understood dominance, possession, and hunger. Something about the bond unsettled it, however, and although Theron did not yet understand why, he knew the King kept circling back to it.

Matt studied him. “You’re doing the silent brooding thing again.”

Under different circumstances, the comment might have drawn a smile from him. Now it nearly hurt because Theron could feel how carefully Matt watched him. There was no suspicion in that attention, only concern, and the bond carried it too clearly.

“I am thinking.”

“That’s usually when the horrifying things happen around here.”

The attempt at humor landed softer than usual, and Matt knew it too. Theron felt the tension beneath Matt’s calm delivery, along with fear whose every sharp edge focused on Theron rather than Matt himself.

The realization disturbed something inside him he had spent centuries forcing into silence. Caring had always been dangerous. Given enough time, attachment became weakness.

The King’s voice slid through his thoughts, quiet and venomous.

You let him matter.

Theron returned his attention to the throne before the words could settle any deeper. The massive structure loomed above the abyss while black mineral spread through the surrounding stone in branching networks resembling veins feeding the mountain itself. Theron could feel the King within all of it now. The presence was no longer confined to flesh or spirit. Long ago, the mountain had become an extension of him.

A memory surfaced without warning.

Theron stood on blood-slick stone beneath burning banners while wolves screamed beyond the shattered walls. His father gripped his shoulders hard enough to bruise as smoke rolled through the ruined throne room.

You do not hesitate with him. You do not listen. You do not pity him.

Theron closed his eyes. The memories were coming faster, blurring the line between past and present, and what frightened him most was the growing certainty that some no longer belonged entirely to him.

“You are hearing him more clearly now,” Baptiste said beside him.

Theron opened his eyes. The older wolf watched from several feet away, grim but unsurprised. Baptiste had likely recognized the signs before anyone else. Wolves who survived this long learned to notice when someone was losing ground inside his own mind.

“Yes,” Theron answered.

Matt turned toward him. “Since when?”

Theron hesitated, and Matt’s expression hardened.