Chapter 485: Chapter 485 CATHERINE’S ISLAND

SERAPHINA’S POV

The Maldives looked too beautiful to belong to Catherine.

That was the first thought that crossed my mind when the islands appeared beneath us, scattered across the ocean like pieces of green glass set into endless blue.

Sunlight spread over the water in dazzling sheets, turning the surface silver where the waves shifted and gold where the morning light caught them.

From above, it was almost impossible to imagine that anything monstrous could exist beneath so much beauty.

Then the mark connected to Jack pulsed.

The warmth of the ocean vanished from my awareness, replaced by the cold, familiar pressure of darkness waiting beneath it.

My fingers tightened around the armrest.

Kieran noticed immediately.

He sat across from me, dressed for battle, his dark hair swept back from his face, and his expression sharpened into the controlled calm that came before violence.

His eyes met mine as he reached across the narrow space between us and took my hand.

“What is it?” he asked.

I looked through the small oval window again, past the brilliant water and the ring of islands clustered ahead.

“She knew we would come eventually. She prepared this place to receive an assault a long time ago.”

Corin’s expression tightened. “So much for the element of surprise.”

I closed my eyes. The silver markings along my spine warmed beneath my clothes, and I breathed the way Mother had taught me in the dream—inward first, then outward.

I didn’t reach for Catherine’s island like a hand grasping in the dark. I let the connection settle inside me until the mark on Jack became a pulse beneath distant water, and beyond it, I felt the barrier.

Dark magic had been stitched into the air above the water—a nauseating cocktail of witchcraft, blood offerings, psychic residue, and something metallic that tasted faintly of wolfsbane at the back of my throat.

It didn’t simply block entry. It watched. It breathed. It recognized intrusion the way a sleeping predator recognized footsteps near its den.

When I opened my eyes, the aircraft was unnervingly still.

“It’s been there a long time,” I said. “Long enough that parts of it have settled into the island.”

Maxwell swore softly under his breath.

Brett’s jaw tightened, and beside him, Maris looked toward the window with the cold, focused expression I had seen on her face when she saved me at Seabreeze’s border.

Kieran’s thumb moved once over my knuckles.

“Can you break it?”

I wanted to say yes instantly.

I wanted to give him certainty because he gave it so freely to Daniel, to me, to everyone who looked to him and needed strength.

I opted for the truth.

“I can open a way through,” I said. “I don’t know if I can bring the whole thing down without alerting everything beneath it or collapsing whatever wards are tied to the facility.”

Alois nodded slowly, his gaze already turning inward as he calculated possibilities.

“That would be unwise. If the barrier is tied into the physical structure, destroying it carelessly could trigger defensive measures, containment failures, or execution of hostages.”

Kieran’s grip on my hand tightened.

“If Sera purifies a narrow passage,” Alois continued, “I can stabilize the edges with layered counter-wards. Corin can reinforce the psychic side and prevent the barrier from closing around the breach.”

“Yay,” Corin drawled. “I’d love to play door keep instead of being in the middle of the action.”

Despite the lightness in his tone, the cabin was quiet for a moment, full of all the things we didn’t say.

No one wanted to split.

No one wanted to choose who stepped into Catherine’s lair and who stayed at the mouth of it, holding open a path, waiting to see who made it out.

Too soon, the aircraft began descending, and the island grew closer.

From above, Catherine’s domain looked like a private paradise, surrounded by reefs and white sand, with dense green foliage covering most of the land.

A sleek estate sat near the western ridge, all pale stone and glass, elegant enough to belong in a travel magazine.

Beyond it, hidden among the trees, I saw service buildings, a narrow dock, and what appeared to be a helipad partially concealed by palms.

But beneath all of it, the darkness waited, pressing against my senses oppressively.

The aircraft could not land directly on the island, so we approached by water from a nearby uninhabited atoll.

By the time our feet touched sand, the sun was high in the sky, spilling heat across the beach. The air was filled with salt, damp foliage, and the distant cry of seabirds.

Our elite force moved quickly and quietly, unloading equipment from the boats and forming ranks behind Kieran.

I stood beside Kieran at the edge of the water, facing Catherine’s island across the channel.

The distance was not wide, but the barrier made it feel endless.

I could see the shimmer now. The air above the water bent strangely around the island, too smooth in places and too dense in others, as if reality itself had been coated in dark glass.

Alois stepped forward and extended one hand.

The air snapped.

Several warriors flinched as a ripple crossed the channel, invisible to human sight but sharp enough that every wolf present felt it brush against their instincts.

Alois’s mouth flattened. “Interesting.”

Corin moved to my other side.

“That’s your professional assessment?”

“My professional assessment contains several words I am choosing not to say in front of armed warriors who are already nervous.”

Despite everything, a few strained smiles moved through the nearest ranks.

Then the barrier pulsed again, and the humor died.

I stepped toward the water.

Kieran immediately moved with me.

“No,” I murmured, touching his arm before he could follow. “Not yet.”

His eyes darkened. “Sera.”

“I need to feel where it will give.”

“It may strike back.”

“I know.”

That was the problem.

Catherine did not leave doors unguarded. She left invitations disguised as weaknesses and waited for someone naive enough to mistake them for opportunity.

I inhaled slowly, then let my power turn inward first.

My awareness sank through my own breath, my bones, my blood, and the completed markings along my back warmed like moonlight beneath skin.

I did not throw myself at the barrier or try to overpower it. Instead, I listened for the places where Catherine’s magic had been forced to bend around something it could not fully digest.

Ocean.

Sunlight.

Earth.

The island had existed before her.

No matter how thickly she had layered her darkness across this place, she had not created it.

There!

A narrow point near the reef where the barrier touched shallow water and coral. The magic there was thick, but not seamless.

It had warped around old life, around salt and stone, around something quietly stubborn that had refused to become part of Catherine’s design.

I opened my eyes.

“There,” I whispered.

The entry point was not obvious from the outside, nothing more than a stretch of glittering water between coral ridges.

Alois stepped closer, his expression sharpening.

“Yes. I feel it now.”

I walked forward before I could second-guess myself.

Kieran followed, his presence settled at my side, steady and immovable, while the warriors behind us waited in tense silence.

The closer I came to the barrier, the colder the air became.

It was subtle at first—a wrongness against my skin, then a pressure against my chest, then a whispering weight at the edge of my hearing.

I heard voices layered inside it, too faint to understand. Some sounded angry. Some sounded afraid. Some sounded like they were pleading.

My stomach churned.

Catherine had not merely powered this barrier with spells. She had fed it suffering.

I lifted my hand.

The barrier touched my palm before my fingers reached it, and a cold, invasive burn tried to sink beneath my skin and find something to hook into.

Beneath it all, I felt Catherine’s signature, elegant and cruel, threaded through every layer as if she had personally sewn the darkness into place.

My knees nearly buckled.

Kieran’s arm came around my waist instantly.

“Sera.”

“I’m fine,” I breathed.

“You are not.”

“No,” I admitted, pressing my palm harder against the invisible surface. “But I can do this.”

Power moved through me, not as a wild surge but as a steady tide. I guided it inward first, anchoring it in myself before letting it flow through my arm and into the barrier.

Silver light spread beneath my palm, thin at first, then brighter as it met the dark threads and began to burn.

The barrier screamed.

Every warrior on the beach reacted.

Some staggered. Others clapped hands over their ears. Wolves snarled as the sound clawed through flesh and bone, but I kept my palm pressed against the surface and forced myself to breathe.

I followed the weakness around the coral.

The silver light slipped into the seam.

Darkness recoiled.

For one terrifying second, something on the other side pushed back.

My power flared instinctively.

Kieran’s grip tightened.

“Sera, do not chase her.”

His voice snapped through the pull, and I realized with a jolt that the opening had widened deliberately, inviting me deeper.

A trap.

I pulled back from the temptation and drove my power downward instead, into the seam around the reef, purifying only what I needed and nothing more.

The barrier resisted violently, trying to seal around my light, but Alois began chanting behind me, his voice clear and forceful over the rising wind.

Corin’s psychic power followed a moment later, cool and immense, wrapping around the breach like a second spine.

The pressure shifted.

The barrier split.

A narrow archway of trembling silver opened over the water, its edges writhing with black veins that tried constantly to knit themselves back together.

Beyond it, the channel seemed darker, the island closer and somehow less beautiful now that the hidden rot had been exposed.

Alois appeared at my side, pale but focused.

“This is as much as we can risk.”

“How long can you hold it?” Kieran asked.

Alois looked at the archway, then at Corin, then at the witch-sensitive operatives already moving into position behind him.

“If Catherine stops fighting us through it, perhaps long enough.”

Alois turned to me.

“Once you enter, do not assume the passage will remain open without interference. If we are forced to shift the breach, follow Corin’s thread.”

Corin lifted two fingers to his temple. “I’ll keep a psychic line on you as long as I can.”

I nodded as Kieran stepped in front of the assembled force.

His voice carried across the beach, deep and steady, cutting through fear the way only an Alpha’s command could.

“We go in fast, we stay in formation, and we do not chase anything that separates from the main path unless I give the order. Catherine has had years to prepare this place, which means every easy victory is suspect and every empty path is bait. Our priority is extraction of Margaret Lockwood and all surviving victims. If Marcus is present, we take him if possible. If Jack appears, you do not engage him alone.”

His gaze swept over every warrior.

“And if Catherine tries to turn you against each other, you remember why you are here.”

No one spoke, but shoulders straightened. Eyes hardened.

Kieran turned to me.

“Ready?”

I looked past him at the silver breach trembling over the water.

No.

No one could be ready for Catherine.

But my mother was somewhere beyond that barrier, innocent victims needed us, and every second we waited gave Catherine more time to decide which life she would break next.

I took Kieran’s hand.

“Ready.”