Darkness is never just absence, it’s weight, memory, the taste of things lost and never buried deep enough. For a time, was it minutes, hours, centuries? that’s all there was. Blank heaviness, a sensation not of sleep but of drowning in black wool, a thick velvet curtain wrapped tight around bone and mind. My body was a rumour, my nerves the last echo of distant thunder. Cold bit at my skin, cold not of winter air, but of something older, rawer, the chill that seeps up from stone and into the heart.

  Then, a throb, a pulse of pain, faint but real, shuddered in my chest, and the world began to drag me back. Not in a rush, but like drowning in reverse, weight giving way, layer by layer, to the intolerable sharpness of reality. The darkness wasn’t gone, only receding. Cold came next, crawling along my arms and legs, making the little hairs on my tail stand up, making my claws flex, scraping against the stone beneath me.

  Somewhere, far away, I heard the wet slow drip of water, steady, mocking, like an indifferent clock marking time in an oubliette. I tried to breathe. Air entered, thick and wrong. It carried not life but the reek of things long dead, rotten, left behind. My nose wrinkled, a reflex older than fear, and I gagged, every muscle in my face twisting. The smell was overwhelming, a riot of decay and clotted blood and something sweeter, putrid, crawling into my mouth and ears. I tasted death before I could see it. I tasted the history of a hundred bodies, a hundred betrayals, spilled and left to fester. Feline senses are a curse in a charnel pit.

  My mind thudded, thick and sluggish, but through the fog something burned bright and steady, impossible to ignore, impossibly comforting even now. The Bond. Master. I could feel it, a current running from my chest outward, a pulse of certainty and fire threading through the dark. It didn’t matter if the rest of me was dust; the Bond meant he was near. No more than a few heartbeats away, close enough to touch if I could only move.

  My tail twitched, but the motion was weak, uncoordinated, as if my own body had forgotten how to obey. My left leg ached, a bruised, gnawing pain radiating up from my thigh to my hip, where the memory of steel lingered, cruel and insistent. My side throbbed in time with my heart. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry, tongue swollen and heavy. My ears flicked, catching every echo: the slow drip, the hush of air, the distant rustle of something that might not be entirely dead.

  With a monumental effort, I forced my eyes to open. Slits at first, burning, watering, stinging from the miasma in the air. Light was scarce, only a faint phosphorescent shimmer glowing in seams along the stone. I let my vision adjust, hating every second, resenting the world for demanding I return.

  The first thing I saw was a corpse, a dwarf, I think, face gone purple-black, eyes wide, lips curled back in a rictus of surprise and agony. His hands were up near his throat, fingers twisted in their last desperate plea. Next to him, sprawled half atop a boulder, an Alderian woman, throat cut so deep her head lolled almost backwards, hair stained red, dress caked in old mud. Beyond her, the carnage multiplied, a goblin curled on its side, tiny hands clutching its belly, guts spilling out in loops, mouth open in a forever scream; a catgirl, ears askew, fur matted and stiff, face unrecognisable except for the collar still around her throat, a faded tag, a word I couldn’t make out.

  The cavern stretched out, deeper and wider than it first appeared. Stalactites dripped slowly, each droplet making a tiny crater in the grime. The walls were smeared with black and brown, shadows or stains, I couldn’t say, and I didn’t care to look closer. Piles of bodies formed islands in the muck, limbs tangled, some stripped naked, others still dressed in rags or fine clothes or nothing but the remnants of pride. Alderian, goblin, elf, dwarf, even another catgirl. Every race, every age, all rotting together, time erasing the lines that divided them. Some had been here longer than others, bones picked clean, others just beginning the journey from flesh to nothing. Some were headless. Some were just heads.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The smell pressed down, heavy as wet fur and fear. I gagged again, body arching, but nothing came up, my stomach was empty, or too numb to answer. My nostrils burned, eyes streaming, the world a blur of rot and loss and the static hiss of adrenaline trying to kick my body back into action.

  Slowly, piece by piece, sensation returned, each nerve reporting in, each joint sending pulses of pain, cold, and something older, more primal: terror. Not for myself. Never for myself. For him. The Bond thrummed in my chest, wild and insistent, a beacon I clung to like a drowning thing. I forced myself to turn, dragging my head up inch by inch, the room swimming, vertigo threatening to roll me back into unconsciousness.

  My ears strained for more. I caught the ragged rhythm of his breath, the near-silent intake and exhale, and felt it inside me, heartbeat matching, the pulse of the Bond keeping time with my own. If he was alive, I was alive. Nothing else mattered.

  I tried to move again, an arm, a paw, anything. My fingers twitched, my claws attempted to drag through the filth, nails catching on bone, skin, something soft and yielding. I recoiled, every nerve screaming at the violation, but I forced myself not to cry out. My head lolled, chin brushing my collarbone, the world a patchwork of horror. My eyes scanned, more corpses, so many it was impossible to count. Some recent, blood still tacky, others so old they were no more than brown shadows on the stone.

  Something scurried near my foot, a rat, or something larger, bolder. It sniffed at my leg, whiskers trembling, then darted away, vanishing into the gloom. My tail curled in, defensive, muscles tight as wire.

  I tried to speak, nothing but a cracked, dry rasp escaped. My tongue felt like it belonged to someone else, my throat raw from whatever scream had torn out in my last moment of consciousness. The silence pressed in, thick and alive, every breath an ordeal.

  But the Bond held. The Bond burned. I closed my eyes, just for a second, drawing strength from that link. I let it steady me, let it push the fear and sickness aside, just enough to remind myself: I am here.

  I am Aliza. I am his.

  A single word crashes through the bond, blunt, sharp as a gunshot in a midnight alley, undeniable.

  "HEEL"

  It is not a request. Not a plea. Not a suggestion. Just an order, and I freeze as if I’d swallowed a live wire. Muscles lock, heart skipping, breath caged somewhere between panic and obedience. That single syllable drowns the chaos, cuts through pain, through the cold, through the nightmare stink of rot and blood and dead things whispering in the dark. For a moment, the bond is a chain around my throat. For a moment, I belong to that word, and nothing else.

  Then, before my muscles can even twitch in rebellion, I feel it: an arm sliding round my shoulders, sudden and hard, not Master’s, too small, too quick, too impersonal. Panic flares, my body screaming to move, to fight, to break free. My claws flex, tail lashing, every instinct shrieking at the restraint, but my body is sluggish, nerves refusing to answer, the world spinning in slow, sickly revolutions. The stranger’s grip is vice-tight, pressing me into the earth, pinning me between corpse and stone, and all I can manage is a low, animal growl. The bond thrums, desperate and wild, but the order binds me heel, heel, heel again and again, an iron mantra in my skull.

  Suddenly, a prick, sharp, cold, deep in my arm. I hiss, but it’s feeble, the sound barely rising above a whimper. There’s a strange fizz behind my ears, a tingling that slides down my spine, making my vision stutter, edges blurring into a shimmering haze. My hearing fizzles, everything distant and tinny, as if I’ve been dropped into a pool and the world is somewhere on the other side of the water. For a heartbeat, I can’t tell if I’m dying or waking.

  But then clarity. Sound returns in a rush, all at once, as if someone’s spun the world back up to speed. Master. His scent cuts through the putrid haze, crisp and undeniable, as welcome as rain in a drought. I fight to lift my head, to drag in the air that carries him, my entire body straining toward him with the mindless loyalty of the condemned.

  And then his voice, not in my mind, not through the bond, but out loud, rough, sardonic, a tired sneer layered with something only I am allowed to hear. “Looks like you, my wife, were… well, my wife. Mireclaw ended up falling back, and luckily for me, us, the Black Fang just dragged you next to the iron mine.”