Roxy swung the heavy metal base of the lamp with every ounce of strength she possessed, aiming directly for the back of Marcus’s skull.

But Marcus had spent years operating on a hyper-vigilant, paranoid frequency of absolute control. The faint, rushing sound of her hospital gown sweeping against the linoleum was all the warning he needed.

With a sudden, violent pivot, Marcus spun around. He threw his arm up, his hand catching the thick metal pole just inches from his face.

The impact sent a jarring, painful shockwave down Roxy’s arms, but the lamp stopped dead in the air.

Marcus’s dark eyes widened in shock, which instantly boiled over into rage.

With a sharp, brutal twist, he wrenched the heavy lamp out of her trembling grip. He threw it carelessly across the room. The metal crashed against the sterile wall, shattering the bulb in a shower of sparks and glass.

Before Roxy could even attempt to dart past him, Marcus lunged. He grabbed her violently by the shoulders, shoving her backward until her spine slammed painfully against the cold, hard plaster of the hospital wall.

He didn’t hit her. He didn’t have to. He simply moved his larger frame to completely block the doorway, boxing her entirely into the corner of the room.

"What did you think you were going to do with that, Roxann?" Marcus sneered, his chest heaving as he loomed over her. His hands remained clamped on her shoulders, pinning her in place. "Hit me? Run out into the hallway in a hospital gown, barefoot and half-crazed?"

Roxy gritted her teeth, her chest rising and falling rapidly. The phantom surge of aquatic magic that had given her the strength to stand was beginning to flicker under the crushing, suffocating weight of his psychological assault.

"Look at you," Marcus whispered, his voice dropping into that chilling, mocking cadence designed to dismantle her reality piece by piece. He looked her up and down with absolute, withering pity. "You’re shaking. You can barely stand. The doctors warned me the brain swelling might cause severe hysteria and paranoia. And you just gave me all the proof I need."

He stepped closer, invading her space until she was forced to press her head flat against the wall.

"No one is ever going to believe you," Marcus hissed, his breath hot against her face. "If you walk out that door and tell them I crashed the car, they’ll just nod sympathetically and heavily medicate you. You are weak. You are crazy. You are a severely brain-damaged woman who just tried to attack her devoted, grieving husband. I am the only one who can tolerate you, Roxann. I am the only one who can protect you from yourself."

He was trying to make her feel small. He was trying to shrink her entire universe down to the exact, suffocating dimensions of this sterile room, where he was the absolute god and she was nothing but a broken doll.

For a terrible, fleeting second, the old, ingrained fear threatened to swallow her whole.

***

The master suite of the Iron-Wood Manor was no longer a place of quiet, agonising mourning.

Caspian had stepped back from the bed, his chest heaving, his striking aquatic eyes wide with the absolute, undeniable proof of the glitch. He had felt her hug him back. He had felt the Matriarch.

But it was the children of the Vanguard who seized the momentum.

They poured into the room, and they refused to be sad anymore. Grief was a passive state, and the family’s blood was forged in absolute, aggressive defiance.

Drax marched to the foot of the bed, his dark eyes burning with protective, draconic intensity. Zale stood beside him, wiping the last of his tears away, his small jaw set with stubborn resolve.

On the bed itself, Tyara had fully shifted into her white tiger cub form. She crawled directly onto the Vessel’s lap, laying her warm body horizontally across her mother’s rigid thighs, acting as a physical, living anchor of Beastworld warmth against the freezing celestial aura.

Tanith stood at the center of the Vanguard offspring, holding little Fedor securely in her arms. The ten-year-old snake-shifter possessed an ancient, commanding presence that completely defied her age.

"No more crying," Tanith declared, her green eyes sweeping over her siblings. "The gods want it to be quiet. They want her to be empty. We are not going to let them have quiet."

She turned to the triplets. Axel and Onyx stood shoulder to shoulder, their wolf ears swivelled forward, their eyes glowing with lethal blue Northern light. Iris stood between her brothers, staring at her mother with sympathy.

"Make her hear us," Tanith instructed in a cold tone. "Howl. Howl as loud as you can!"

Axel and Onyx didn’t hesitate. The twin wolf pups dropped to their hands and knees, throwing their heads back toward the vaulted, timber ceiling. Iris joined them, tilting her head back, letting her violet magic intertwine with the raw, biological instincts of her brothers.

They drew in a massive breath.

And then, the triplets unleashed the Pack Howl.

It was not the mournful, sorrowful cry of a wounded animal. It was a deafening, unified, and ferociously protective roar that violently shook the very foundations of the Iron-Wood Manor. It was a sound designed to traverse freezing tundras, to echo off jagged mountain peaks, and to call a lost pack member home in the darkest of nights.

Drax let out a deep, volcanic, rumbling roar that vibrated the floorboards, layering his draconic fire beneath the wolves’ piercing cry. Zale let out a high, fierce shout, and Tyara roared from the Vessel’s lap.

Tanith looked down at the fiery-red fox kit trembling in her arms. She gently stroked Fedor’s head, her expression softening into a fierce, absolute promise.

"Did you hear that, Fedor?" Tanith cooed softly, even as the deafening roar of her siblings shook the glass in the windows. "We are going to save our mother. We are calling her back."

The Vessel sat rigidly amidst the deafening, chaotic tempest of noise. She just blinked.

On Earth, the sterile, claustrophobic walls of the hospital room suddenly ceased to exist.

Marcus was still talking, his lips moving as he spewed his toxic, gaslighting poison, but Roxy could no longer hear him.

The deafening, unified howl of the Vanguard violently pierced the dimensional veil. It ripped through the humming fluorescent lights and the smell of bleach, echoing directly in the marrow of her terrestrial bones.

She heard Axel and Onyx’s fierce Northern cry. She felt Drax’s draconic rumble vibrating against the soles of her bare feet. She felt the heavy, protective weight of a white tiger cub draped across her lap.

We are calling her back. The fear completely, instantaneously evaporated. The suffocating, psychological cage Marcus had spent years building shattered into a million irreparable pieces of glass.

Why was she afraid of this man? He was just a coward in an expensive suit. He was a pathetic, fragile terrestrial abuser whose only weapon was manipulation.

She was Roxann. She was the Matriarch of the Vanguard. She had stared into the abyssal eyes of the Demon King. She had survived the collapsing ruins of the Fox Kingdom. She commanded the absolute devotion of a Dragon, a Wolf, a Tiger, a Snake, and a Leviathan. She was the mother of monsters and kings.

Roxy didn’t shrink against the wall. She didn’t cower.

She engaged her core and stood up to her absolute maximum height. She squared her shoulders, her spine snapping perfectly, rigidly straight, mirroring the exact, terrifying posture of the celestial entity occupying her body in the Beastworld.

Marcus’s voice trailed off. He blinked, stepping back involuntarily as the entire atmosphere of the room violently shifted.

The woman standing in front of him was not his broken, hysterical victim. Her moss-green eyes, previously wide with panic, were now completely devoid of terrestrial fear. They blazed with a cold, lethal, and absolute predatory authority that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"You..." Marcus stammered, entirely unsettled by the sudden, terrifying dominance radiating from her small frame. "Don’t look at me like that."

Roxy stepped forward, completely invading his space, forcing the man who had just pinned her to the wall to take another subconscious step backward. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t scream.

She looked him dead in the eye, channelling the absolute, terrifying wrath of five Warlord Kings.

"If I could end you right now," Roxy said, her voice dropping into a low, smooth, and chillingly even purr that vibrated with pure, lethal intent, "I will. A thousand times over. In the most messy way possible."