Page 156 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

"Knox," I breathe, but the word comes too late.

Viper’s voice crackles over the radio. "They’ve passed the marker. On your word, Prime Alpha."

Knox lifts the radio to his mouth.

"Detonate."

The mountain bucks.

A deafening blast rips through the Pass, then another, then another, each one deeper and more violent than the last. Rock erupts upward in a towering spray as debris bursts into the sky.

The battlement heaves under my boots, and I lose my balance. I slam hard into Knox’s side, and I scramble to stay upright before his hand catches a fistful of my jacket and hauls me against him.

A larger blast rips through the mountain, and the shockwave hits a beat later, punching into my chest and throwing grit against my face. My ears ring and the air fills with dust.

Knox holds me tighter against him with one arm, his other snapping his radio back to his mouth to bark orders. Around us, soldiers shout and duck and scramble for updates, but their voices come to me muffled and far away.

I can only stare at the place where the Pass used to be, which is now just dust and chaos and ruin.

The Pass is gone.

The words tear out of me before I can stop them.

"What did you do?" I scream. "Knox! What did you do?"

My voice comes out ragged and choked, and it's instantly drowned out by the cacophony.

Around us, soldiers are shouting for reports. Radios spit static and clipped updates. One of the officers farther down the battlement throws a fist in the air and shouts in victory. Another starts laughing, half-hysterical with relief.

None of it feels real.

Knox lowers the radio and looks down at me. Fallout dusts his face, and his red eyes burn bright and hard, command still locked tight through every line of him. He's cold, efficient, and tactical.

"We stopped the breach," he says.

The words hit me like a slap.

I stare at him, then back at the mountain, at the place where the Pass used to cut through to the other side. There is no route anymore. Only broken stone and rubble where the narrow road once ran.

"It's gone," I breathe, the tingling tendrils of shock working their way through my body.

Below us, the dust keeps rolling outward in dirty white clouds, drifting over the lower slope and into the forest. The enemy is gone from sight, the mountain too, and everything beyond the collapse has disappeared.

I know Blackreach is still there and that an entire province does not vanish because its entrance does, but it doesn't matter.

The only way through is gone.

My mouth goes dry. "Why would you…?"

My fingers tighten on his arm so hard my knuckles ache.

"That was my road to them," I say. The words come out softer now, and I doubt he can hear them. "You took it away."

Behind Knox, another burst of cheering rises from the courtyard. Someone shouts that the enemy is buried and calls it a victory. The sound scrapes across my skin.

Victory should not feel this much like grief.

Knox looks past my shoulder at the ruined mountain, then back at me, and suddenly I'm not looking at General Knox, but my Alpha. The one who holds me close at night in our nest.