The connection opened.
“Get to the library now.”
Rhen responded with something brief and irritated.
Dax’s expression hardened.
“No, not later. She is burning from the inside, and stored blood is doing nothing. You know what this is.”
The silence on the other end lasted too long.
Dax’s voice became dangerously calm.
“I do not care how you feel about her. She is tethered to you, and your blood created the connection. If she tears herself apart on Leena’s antique rug while you stand somewhere pretending this is not your responsibility, that will be on you.”
Rhen answered sharply.
Dax ended the call before the argument could continue.
Veya’s trembling had become violent enough to shake the chaise. Sweat dampened her hair and ran along her throat, while her eyes remained unfocused beneath the hunger she could no longer conceal.
Dax crouched beside her again, staying close enough to catch her without closing the limited space around her.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Rhen is coming.”
She barely heard him.
Her body no longer seemed to belong to her. Everything inside it reached toward Rhen’s blood and the violent gravity of the tether, even while her mind recoiled from the demand.
She did not want Rhen.
She did not want anything inside her to need him.
The tether remained indifferent to both truths.
The library door opened hard enough to strike the wall.
Rhen entered with his coat moving behind him and his expression stripped of anything Veya could read. His silver eyesabsorbed the room in one sweep, taking in the fire, the chaise, and the way she had folded around the pain.
Dax rose.
“Now.”
Rhen crossed the library in three strides and lowered himself beside the chaise. His face displayed neither sympathy nor warmth, only the brutal focus he brought to anything he had decided must be controlled.
“Look at me.”
Veya tried, but another spasm tore through her before she could obey.
Rhen caught the back of her neck only when the movement threatened to throw her from the chaise. He steadied her without drawing her closer.
Then he pushed back his sleeve and sank his fangs into his own wrist.
The skin opened immediately.
The scent of his blood moved through the library, rich and dark enough to cut through smoke, wax, and old paper.
Veya recoiled.
