“I care whether she remains useful.”
“And if she does not?”
Rhen met his gaze.
“Then the problem resolves itself.”
Nothing in his face suggested grief had driven him to cruelty or that pain had made him say something he did not mean.
This was not Rhen lashing out.
This was Rhen stating the truth.
Malakai studied him before signing,Leena believed there was more inside you than this.
The room became dangerously still.
Rhen’s gaze moved to him with enough coldness to silence most creatures.
“Leena is dead.”
He walked around Cole and left.
The door closed behind him.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Malakai’s hands eventually moved.
He meant every word.
Cole looked at Veya sleeping beneath the blanket.
“I know.”
That knowledge was worse than believing Rhen had cracked beneath the grief. A broken male might eventually return to himself.
Rhen had simply shown them what had always existed beneath Leena’s singular exception.
Chapter 28
The stronghold had become unbearable.
Rhen had lived comfortably with silence for centuries, but the silence after Leena’s death possessed a different weight. It followed him through every corridor and remained inside every room she would never enter again.
Her death had not left an absence.
It had left evidence.
The others could sit together, speak her name, and pretend grief became lighter when divided among them. They could mourn as a clan and draw comfort from the fact that their pain was shared.
Rhen had never shared anything willingly.
He armed himself out of habit rather than necessity. Black tactical clothing fitted close to his body, while blades settled into the places muscle memory expected to find them. The familiar weight anchored him to the only version of himself that still functioned.
He left without taking a coat.
The iron gates opened, and the forest beyond the stronghold stretched beneath a sky sharpened by frost. Old paths disappeared between bare trees and bramble-filled clearings that had existed before any of them claimed the land.
