The confrontation wasn't a conversation. It was a collision.
Emin burst into the main bunker. His golden eyes were blazing. The copper tang of fresh blood from Asher's kill clung to the air like a confession.
"You killed them."
Emin advanced on the Rogue. A wall of muscle and judgment.
"You risked her exposure for a savage kill. That is not survival, Rogue. That is reckless bloodlust."
Asher didn't move. He leaned against the concrete wall, cleaning a fingernail with a blade. Unbothered.
"That was defense, Alpha," Asher countered. "Your way would have left them alive to report. My way leaves no witnesses. It's cleaner."
"Your way is a trail of bodies that leads straight to us!"
"Silence!"
Damaris snapped.
He emerged from his lab. His suit was wrinkled. His patience was dead.
"We are wasting critical time. The Hybrid needs a unified approach, not a display of your petty locker-room rivalry."
He looked at the three of them. His face a cold disgust.
"This conflict, amplified by the Mate Bond, is making our key asset unstable. We must train as a unit."
Emin and Asher exchanged a look. Pure, distilled hatred.
"Fine," Emin forced out. "But we train using my methods. Discipline comes first. No magic. No hiding. Only raw physical stamina."
"Incorrect," Damaris countered instantly. "The magic is the most volatile variable. The session must start with the grounding spell I devised."
"Both are useless if you're dead," Asher chimed in.
He pushed off the wall.
"The lesson needs a real scenario. Evasion. Adaptability. You can't meditate your way out of a knife fight."
Ravenna watched them.
The source of her chaos. Arguing over how to control the detonator.
The Mate Bond pulsed. Sharp. Agonizing.
She felt Emin's aggressive need to dominate. Damaris's chilling need to control. Asher's desperate need to sabotage.
"Stop," Ravenna whispered.
They didn't hear her. They were too busy shouting.
"We start with the run!" Emin roared. He stepped toward the exit.
"We start with the silence!" Damaris retaliated. His hands wove a spell to enforce stillness.
"We start with the shadows!" Asher hissed. He darted to block Damaris's view.
The clash was immediate.
Emin's physical dominance radiated outward. Damaris's counter-magic surged to freeze him.
Ravenna felt the combined force hit her like a punch to the gut.
Dominance. Control. Cynicism.
They erupted inside her core.
She screamed. She doubled over.
Her silver-black energy didn't flow. It vomited outward. Uncontrolled. Desperate.
It slammed into Damaris's energy field. It hooked into Emin's rage. It grabbed Asher's fear.
WUMPH.
All three men dropped.
Not from injury but from sensory overload.
They were flooded with the painful, magnified emotional soup of the group.
Emin was paralyzed by cold logic—a feeling alien to his instinct. Damaris was blinded by hot, red rage—a feeling he had suppressed since birth. Asher was seized by paralyzing terror—the one thing a rogue never admits to.
Ravenna lay gasping on the floor.
The blast faded. The bond throbbed with a dull, sickening warning.
Damaris was the first to recover. He pushed himself up on shaking arms. His grey eyes were wide, expressing a genuine fear.
"We can't," he choked out. "We cannot survive this. Our conflicting intentions are tearing her mental shielding apart. It is destabilizing the bond itself."
Emin breathed raggedly. He forced himself to sit. The Alpha looked shattered.
"If she dies," Emin rasped, "we feel it. If we fight like this, we ensure her power destroys us all before Nyzor ever finds us."
Asher leaned heavily against the wall. He was pale. Shaking. His cynical mask was gone.
"That was the Alpha's fury and the Warlock's control trying to merge inside my head," Asher whispered. "It was agony. We can't do that again."
The air was heavy.
The realization hit them like a brick: Their hatred was literally killing their shared destiny.
Ravenna pushed herself up.
She looked at the three most powerful beings in the Grey Zone. Reduced to trembling messes.
"This is the truth of the Mate Bond," Ravenna said. Her voice was weak, but steady. "It doesn't care about your titles. It only cares about survival. And we are failing."
Damaris found the cold logic in the horror. He ran a trembling hand through his hair.
"The Hybrid is correct," he stated. His voice regained its sharp edge. "If our emotional outputs are amplified, we must reduce the variables."
He looked around.
"The only way for her to safely wield her power is if we achieve emotional synchronization."
Emin stared at him. "You want us to what? Hold hands and sing campfire songs, Warlock?"
"I want us to achieve a shared state of calm," Damaris corrected. His eyes were ruthless.
"If your mind is calm, Alpha, Ravenna only receives calm. If my mind is focused, she receives focus. If Asher is steady, she receives steadiness. We must become a stable power source. Not a chaotic one."
Asher scoffed. But his resistance was weak.
"I hate you both. I can't feel 'calm' when I'm standing next to a pretentious Warlock and a brute Alpha."
"Your feelings are a variable we have to delete," Damaris barked.
"This is necessary. We will now try to share one easy, calm emotion through the bond to settle the Hybrid."
He looked directly at Emin. Emin's face was a mask of rigid denial.
"You despise me, Alpha. I consider you an intellectual stain. But if you cannot clear your mind of rage and find a single second of focus, we will die here."
Damaris leaned in.
"For once, control your primitive instincts. Apply your famed discipline to your own mind."
Emin's gaze traveled. From Damaris's determined face. To Asher's watchful eyes. Finally to Ravenna, the fragile center of their fate.
He hated the idea. He hated the Warlock's logic.
But he hated the memory of that paralyzing agony even more.
"How?" Emin finally growled. The fury was subdued. But present.
"We focus," Damaris said. He assumed command of the experiment.
"We focus on a single, shared thought. We clear the noise. We find the calm. And we send it willingly. Through the bond."
The three powerful men took their places around Ravenna.
Bound by an impossible curse. Hunted by a shared enemy.
They closed their eyes.
The true, painful challenge of the Unholy Alliance had officially started.