Roxy’s lethal, whispered threat hung in the sterile hospital air, vibrating with the absolute authority of a Warlord Queen. For a fraction of a second, the terrestrial abuser standing before her actually looked taken aback.

But Marcus Vance was a man who had built his entire existence on maintaining absolute, suffocating dominance. His shock lasted only a millisecond before it contorted into a dark, sadistic amusement.

He didn’t step back. He didn’t cower.

Marcus let out a low, chilling chuckle. His hand shot forward with terrifying, snake-like speed, his large fingers clamping directly around Roxy’s throat. With a brutal shove, he slammed her back against the plaster wall, lifting her slightly onto the tips of her bare toes.

"That is so cute, coming from you," Marcus mocked, his dark eyes gleaming with malicious delight as he tightened his grip.

The phantom aquatic magic that had given Roxy the strength to stand violently sputtered. The physical reality of a crushed trachea instantly overrode the spiritual defiance of the Vanguard Matriarch. Roxy gasped, her hands flying up to frantically claw at his thick, immaculate wrists, but her atrophied muscles were no match for his terrestrial strength.

"You think you’re dangerous, Roxann?" Marcus whispered, stepping entirely into her personal space, his face inches from hers. "You think you’re some kind of warrior because you read a few novels? You’re nothing. You are a fragile, helpless little girl playing make-believe because your real life is so empty."

He squeezed harder. The flow of oxygen to Roxy’s brain was brutally cut off.

"You couldn’t even leave me right," he sneered, his words acting as toxic venom, deliberately injected to awaken every dormant nightmare she possessed. "You failed at that, too. Look at you. Trembling. Weak. You will always need me to clean up your messes. You will always be a victim."

Roxy’s legs began to violently shake. It all rushed back, completely burying the memories of her Alpha Kings. Her lungs burned with agonizing fire. Black spots began to aggressively dance at the edges of her vision. She tried to picture Kaelen’s icy blue eyes, but all she could see was Marcus’s twisted, victorious smile.

She was suffocating.

***

Suddenly, amidst the deafening noise, Tanith violently gasped.

Her eyes squeezed tightly shut, the instant Marcus’s hand crushed Roxy’s throat on Earth, Tanith felt a horrifying, sympathetic constriction in her own chest.

Tanith’s green eyes snapped wide open.

"Stop!" Tanith shrieked, her voice slicing through the heavy Vanguard roar with terrifying clarity.

The howling instantly ceased. Drax’s draconic rumble died in his throat. Axel, Onyx, and Iris snapped their jaws shut, looking at their older sister in confusion.

Tanith didn’t look at them. She was staring at the Vessel. The empty, divine shell was still sitting perfectly rigid, completely unblinking, but Tanith’s serpentine instincts could feel the transmigrated soul beneath the code violently fading into the dark.

"I need to move now," Tanith breathed, her small hands trembling.

She turned and gently sat the fiery-red fox kit down directly onto the dire-wolf pelts, right beside the Vessel’s rigid leg. Little Fedor whimpered, his oversized ears flattening against his head, deeply unsettled by the sudden cessation of the pack’s noise.

Tanith looked up at her towering teenage brother.

"Drax," Tanith commanded, her voice dropping into an eerily calm, authoritative cadence that belonged to an ancient Warlord general, not a child. "Take the others downstairs. Now. I and Fedor will be fine."

Drax’s jaw clenched. His protective instincts violently rebelled against the idea of leaving his little sister alone with the unpredictable celestial entity. He stepped forward, intending to argue, to demand they all stay together.

But he looked into Tanith’s glowing, golden-green eyes. He didn’t see a frightened ten-year-old girl. He saw the brilliant, tactical intellect of Syris the Snake King, combined with the unyielding, fierce devotion of Roxann the Matriarch. She wasn’t asking; she was issuing a Vanguard decree.

Drax swallowed hard, the draconic scales receding from his neck. He gave a sharp, definitive nod.

"Be careful," Drax ordered, his voice thick with brotherly concern. He immediately turned, grabbing Axel and Onyx by their tunics. "Come on. Out. Iris, grab Zale. Tyara, with me."

Within ten seconds, the elite teenage sentinel had entirely evacuated the younger pups from the master bedroom. The heavy mahogany doors clicked shut, plunging the room back into a heavy, suffocating silence.

Tanith was completely alone with the Vessel and the Kitsune infant.

She turned back to Fedor. The little red fox looked up at her, his dark eyes brimming with unshed tears. He let out a soft, questioning yip.

"I know it hurts, Fedor," Tanith whispered, kneeling on the furs so she was eye-level with the infant. "But she is drowning. She is forgetting us. We have to go get her."

Tanith reached out. Her small fingers gently grasped the thick, braided leather cord resting around Fedor’s neck. Attached to the cord was a glowing, emerald-green stone—a powerful suppression charm Syris had meticulously crafted to regulate the chaotic, overwhelming trickster magic the infant had inherited from the fallen Fox King. It kept his raw illusions from accidentally tearing holes in the physical world.

Tanith looked Fedor directly in the eyes.

"We are taking the chains off," she whispered.

With a swift, decisive tug, Tanith unclasped the necklace and pulled it away.

The absolute, unadulterated power of Ren the Trickster violently erupted into the master bedroom.

Fedor did not whine. He sat back on his haunches and raised his small, fiery-red paws into the air. A massive, swirling vortex of golden and crimson light exploded from his tiny body. It was raw, unfiltered Kitsune magic—the magic of the mind, of illusions, of bridging the gap between what is real and what is imagined. It filled the room with the scent of eternal autumn leaves and the chaotic, dizzying hum of a fractured reality.

Tanith didn’t flinch from the blinding light. She reached out, grasping Fedor’s small, glowing paw in her left hand. With her right hand, she reached across the furs and firmly grabbed the freezing, rigid hand of the Vessel.

She became the biological conductor, bridging the celestial code with the chaotic terrestrial soul via the power of a trickster god.

Tanith closed her glowing green eyes.

"Now, little Fedor," Tanith whispered, her voice echoing with the combined might of the Vanguard. "Take me to her."

The golden Kitsune magic violently surged, traveling up Tanith’s arm, shooting directly through her chest, and slamming into the cold hand of the Vessel.

The physical world of the Iron-Wood Manor completely evaporated.

Tanith felt a sensation of violent, tearing velocity. She was pulled through a blinding white void, the celestial code of the Heavens screaming in protest as the Kitsune magic actively hijacked the dimensional tether. The smell of winter pine and ozone was instantly replaced by a sharp, suffocating stench of chemical bleach and rubbing alcohol.

Her bare feet hit a hard, freezing surface.

Tanith opened her eyes.

She was no longer in the master bedroom. She was standing in a small, square room bathed in harsh, buzzing fluorescent light. The walls were stark white. A strange, clear bag of fluid hung on a metal pole to her left. The air felt thin, sterile, and entirely devoid of ambient magic.

But Tanith barely registered the bizarre, alien environment of the Earthly hospital.

Her golden-green eyes locked instantly onto the corner of the room.

There, pressed flat against the wall, was her mother. Roxy was wearing a strange, thin white gown, her face deathly pale. And standing over her, his large hands wrapped brutally around her throat, was a tall man in a dark suit.

Roxy’s eyes were rolling back, her legs buckling as the man choked the life out of her.

Absolute, visceral panic exploded in Tanith’s chest. For a terrifying second, the ten-year-old girl wanted to scream, to summon venom, to lunge forward and tear the monster’s throat out. But as she took a step forward, she realized her hand passed right through the metal bed frame.

She was an illusion. A psychic projection bridged by Fedor’s magic. She could not physically touch him.

But Tanith possessed the brilliant, analytical mind of the Snake King. She remembered the celestial bargain. She remembered what the Warlords had theorized in the parlor. This wasn’t the physical world. This was a psychological cage constructed by the MotheroftheWorld. The man choking her mother wasn’t an actual, physical threat—he was a ghost. A memory weaponized by trauma.

Tanith squared her small shoulders, refusing to let the horrific sight break her. She drew in a massive breath of the sterile terrestrial air.

"Mother!" Tanith shouted, her high, fierce voice ringing with absolute, unyielding Vanguard authority, cutting through the suffocating terror of the hospital room.

Roxy’s dark, blurring eyes slowly shifted, landing on the glowing, green apparition of her daughter standing in the center of the floor.

"You can defeat him!" Tanith screamed, pointing a fierce, unwavering finger directly at the man in the suit. "He is just your past! He isn’t real!"