And yet he remained beside the wreck instead of walking away.
The realization irritated him enough that his mouth curled.
What the fuck am I doing here?
She was human. Just another temporary thing made of blood, breath, and weakness.
Common sense dictated he should leave her in the wreck and let the night finish what his refusal to move had started.
The dashboard lights pulsed weakly through the wreckage, throwing fractured shadows across her face while rainwater crawled slowly down the shattered windshield. Her lips remained slightly parted, her brow pinched even in unconsciousness as pain pulled visibly at her features.
Even now, her body fought.
That was merely information.
He refused to make it admiration.
Then her eyes fluttered, and for one brief, suspended second, their gazes locked through the broken dark.
She didn’t fully see him. Her expression remained dazed and unfocused beneath pain and concussion, but something still passed between them, sharp enough to feel physical.
Something unnatural.
Something profoundly wrong.
The sensation struck like a knife slid carefully between his ribs. Not hunger. Not violence. Stranger than either, it tightened through him before he could smother it.
His fingers twitched once beside his knee, every instinct urging him closer.
But he held still.
He crouched beside the wreckage, staring at the injured female trapped inside it, unable to decide whether she was prey or bait.
Rhen had survived too long by recognizing traps before they closed around him.
The fuck is this—
A soft sound escaped her lips as she shifted weakly against the ruined seat.
The noise barely registered above the rain and settling metal, yet some buried instinct answered it before he could kill the response.
He could end this now if he wanted.
His jaw tightened hard enough to ache. He had built his existence on the absence of hesitation, brutality sharpened into instinct through centuries of blood and war. Mercy had been carved out of him long ago alongside every other softness worth killing.
Yet he remained there instead of walking away.
Her breathing hitched.
Rhen’s focus sharpened as cold certainty moved through him. This was no longer only blood loss and shock. He could sense the damage deeper beneath her skin, internal and worsening, her pulse fluttering weakly as her body slowly lost the fight to remain alive.
Another tremor rolled through her, weak but stubborn. Her fingers curled instinctively against the seat as though some deeply rooted part of her refused to surrender quietly.
None of it should have mattered to him.
But a corpse couldn’t answer questions.
If heretic magic had driven her onto his road, he needed to know why.
