Chapter 129: What They Want

Chapter 129: What They Want

POV: Astrid Vale

"Move!" Liora shouted, already pulling us down the corridor away from the soldier’s voice still echoing behind us.

I grabbed Ivy tighter around the waist, half dragging her as we ran. Alarms blared through the walls now, a rhythmic pulse that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Behind us, I heard the distinct mechanical hiss of doors sealing shut, one after another.

"They’re locking us in," I gasped.

"They’re trying to," Liora said, cutting hard left through a passage I hadn’t even noticed. "I know which ones haven’t updated yet. Keep moving, don’t stop."

We burst out of the medical facility into a wider section of the underground city, and the scale of what we’d triggered hit me all at once. Warning lights strobed along every wall. Speakers I hadn’t noticed before crackled to life overhead, broadcasting instructions in a calm, mechanical voice that somehow made everything worse. Residents were being told to remain inside. Not to open their doors. Not, specifically, to shelter the surface girls.

They’d put an entire city on lockdown because of us.

Soldiers appeared from a side corridor before I could fully process any of it, three of them, then more behind. Liora didn’t hesitate, throwing herself at the nearest one with a speed and precision that told me this wasn’t the first time she’d been trained to fight, even if she’d never expected to use it against her own people.

I swung at the soldier closest to me, catching him off guard enough to knock him back, but another came from behind and I barely twisted away in time. Ivy tried to help, throwing a weak punch that did almost nothing, her body clearly still fighting the aftereffects of days restrained.

More soldiers kept arriving. We weren’t winning this. We were barely holding a line long enough to breathe.

"This way!" Liora shouted, breaking through a gap between two soldiers and pulling us after her.

We ran, and for a moment I thought we might actually clear them, until Ivy stumbled hard beside me, her leg buckling completely.

"Ivy!" I caught her before she hit the ground, her weight sagging heavily against my side.

"I can keep going," she said, gritting her teeth, but her leg gave out again the second she tried to put weight on it.

I looked back. Soldiers were closing the distance behind us, more joining every second. Liora’s face had gone hard, calculating something I didn’t like the shape of.

"We won’t all make it," she said quietly, more to herself than to us.

"Don’t say that," I said.

She wasn’t listening. She reached into a pocket sewn into her uniform and pulled out a small syringe, the liquid inside dark and unfamiliar.

"What’s that?" I asked.

"An injection," she said, checking it quickly. "Used in extreme medical situations. It forces a transformation."

I understood immediately what she meant, and my stomach dropped. "No."

She ignored me entirely, turning instead and speaking fast, precise. "Listen to me carefully. There’s an older section of Elaris, past the eastern wells. You’ll see markings carved into an archway, three circles inside a triangle. Follow that corridor until it splits, then take the left passage. It leads toward the surface ruins. That’s your way out."

"Liora—"

She reached into another pocket and pulled out a small, worn book, its leather cover embossed with symbols I recognized now from the ruins, and words pressed into the front. Elaris, the City Beneath the Moon.

"Take it," she said, pushing it into my hands.

"What is this?"

"One of the only surviving records of our history," she said. "The war. The curse. Our ancestors. Everything." Her hands trembled slightly as she held it out further, insisting. "If you reach the surface, I want my people’s story to go with you."

My stomach turned over completely. "Liora, don’t."

She smiled at me then, small and sad, nothing dramatic about it at all.

"Run," she said. "Both of you."

I grabbed her arm. "Liora, don’t do this."

She looked at me for one more second, something gentle and resolved in her expression, and then she pulled the syringe up and injected herself before I could stop her.

Her body convulsed almost immediately, her breathing turning ragged, her spine curving unnaturally as bones shifted beneath her skin. I watched her wolf tear free of her human form in seconds, faster and more violent than anything I’d witnessed before, and then she turned, snarling, and threw herself directly at the approaching soldiers.

Some of them hesitated. "Liora?" one of them called out, disbelief cracking through his voice, clearly recognizing her even mid-transformation.

She didn’t stop. She tore into them with everything she had, buying us seconds that felt impossibly precious and unbearably cruel at the same time.

I wanted to stay. Every part of me wanted to turn back and fight beside her, whatever that meant, whatever it cost.

Ivy’s hand closed around my arm, gripping hard. "We have to go."

"I can’t just leave her—"

"Astrid," Ivy said, forcing me to look at her. "She told us to run."

A tear slid down my cheek as I ran. Why did people always die trying to keep me safe?

We followed Liora’s directions exactly, the alarms still blaring through every corridor we passed, security screens flashing our descriptions along the walls, residents peering fearfully from behind locked doors before disappearing again the moment they saw us. Ivy stumbled twice more, and both times I caught her, her body clearly failing faster than her will was.

The book stayed pressed hard against my chest the entire way, Liora’s voice looping through my mind. Take our story with you.

We reached the eastern wells eventually, found the archway with its three circles inside a triangle exactly where she’d described, and followed the corridor until it split. I took the left passage, Ivy leaning heavily against me the whole way, and for one desperate, hopeful second I believed we were actually going to make it.

Then the corridor ended.

A solid wall stood in front of us, nothing else, no door, no opening, nothing that matched what Liora had promised.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

I turned around, my mind scrambling for another route, any route, and found Ivy leaning against the wall behind me, barely conscious, her strength completely spent.

Then I saw him.

Maximus stood at the far end of the corridor, calm, unhurried, as though he’d known exactly where we’d end up before we’d even started running.

He looked at me. Then at Ivy, slumped and exhausted against the stone. Then his gaze settled on the book still clutched against my chest, and something in his expression shifted, quiet and knowing.

"I was beginning to wonder," he said, his voice carrying easily down the empty corridor, "how long it would take you to understand why we brought you here."