Fucking hell.
I vaulted the stairs two at a time to my quarters, and I could hear the whole estate waking up behind me. Somewhere further off, the alert bell was ringing. Three strikes, pause. Three strikes, pause. The pattern meant not under attack but getting ready to be.
Callum was two steps behind me the whole way up.
"Talk," I said, shoving into the armory off my bedroom.
"I was on my way back to the estate. I was maybe four miles out. Torben called me directly—he was on perimeter duty at the seal line, he and two of the younger scouts, Wen and Marcu. He said the ground shook. Not a tremor. His word was shook. Like something hit it from underneath."
"And then."
"And then he said something erupted. Not loud, he said. That's what he kept saying. It wasn't loud, Alpha, it should have been loud, but it wasn't. And a fire came up."
