Fear hit him first, sharp with adrenaline and fresh panic, but beneath it lingered something older and fouler, threaded through her scent like rot beneath rainwater.
Heretic magic.
The fog wasn’t weather rolling in from the marshes. It moved against the wind and carried the same ancient rot beneath its damp chill.
The trace of it slid into his blood with immediate recognition, confirming every instinct that had sharpened since he left Bar X.
She was connected somehow.
Rhen allowed the older sight to rise.
Flesh became irrelevant beneath Charon’s vision. Souls did not glow or shine; they simply declared what laws older than kings had already decided. The condemned carried a mark no glamour, blood, or witchcraft could conceal from him.
The female carried none.
Heretic magic clung to her blood and skin in black-red threads, wound tightly around her life but never rooted in the soul beneath. Someone had dressed her in corruption without earning her damnation.
Bait, then.
Whether she knew it or not remained to be seen.
Rhen moved through the fog soundlessly, all lethal grace and controlled violence, his body cutting through darkness like something made for it. Rain clung to his coat while mud swallowed his boots without a sound, but his focus never left the wreck buried beyond the trees.
Her presence caught beneath his skin, a low, irritating pressure that scraped against instincts he had spent centuries burying beneath bloodshed and discipline.
It did not feel like recognition.
It felt inserted.
Heretic magic threaded through her scent, pressing against his blood with the patience of a command waiting to be obeyed. Leena’s face surfaced uninvited—the only human the clan had ever made room for—and Rhen killed the comparison before it could take shape.
The female in the wreck was human. The heretic taint made her a threat.
Nothing more.
Rhen approached the ruined car slowly, eyes fixed on the faint movement inside the crushed metal frame. Her bloodscented the air more strongly now, warm copper beneath fear and rainwater, cutting through the chemical filth of his last feed and waking the predator despite the blood already burning through his veins.
The wreck groaned as he neared it, twisted steel settling with exhausted creaks beneath the weight of the crash.
Through the shattered driver’s-side window, he finally saw her properly. Dark hair tangled across bloodstreaked skin. Her body slumped unnaturally against the seat while shallow breaths barely lifted her chest.
Alive.
Barely.
Her face was irrelevant.
Her scent wasn’t.
Rhen crouched beside the wreck, one forearm braced against his knee as he assessed the damage.
Blood loss. Likely fractured ribs. Something internal worsening beneath the surface.
Her fingers still curled weakly near her thigh, survival reflexes refusing to release their hold.
Something unpleasant shifted once beneath his ribs.
Rhen crushed it beneath centuries of practiced brutality and emotional silence. He didn’t care about mortals. He especially didn’t involve himself with humans carrying the scent of heretic magic through his territory.
