That was reason enough.
It had to be.
His fangs pressed against his gums as predatory instinct surged through him, tangled with something darker and violently territorial. He could taste her already without touching her, warm blood and fear and storm-soaked skin pulling at every instinct he possessed.
One wound.
One swallow.
One irreversible mistake.
There was no more time.
Rhen growled beneath his breath, furious at himself more than her, before sinking his fangs brutally into his own wrist.
Blood welled instantly beneath the bite, thick and ancient and heavy with power. He pressed the wound against her lips, his expression hardening as though the act itself offended him.
For one long moment, nothing happened.
Then her body trembled.
Her lips parted instinctively against his skin as survival overrode consciousness. She drank weakly from the wound with desperate little pulls that sent a savage jolt through his body. Her fingers twitched against his forearm while her back arched faintly beneath another wave of pain.
A broken sound escaped her throat, halfway between a whimper and a sob.
The forming connection carried it through him as sensation rather than sound, scraping across nerves that had no right to answer her pain.
The instant his blood touched her tongue, the tether opened hard.
Fractured ribs. Internal bleeding. Panic. Exhaustion. The final animal command of a body refusing to die.
The information struck his senses as though the injuries belonged to him, stripping away the distance between donor and recipient.
He felt her.
Too much of her.
The connection slammed into him hard enough that he snarled aloud. He wrenched his wrist away and recoiled a single step through wet leaves and shattered glass while the tether tore at his control.
For one dangerous second, instinct demanded that he close the distance again.
He refused it.
His fangs retracted as he dragged his tongue across the wound, sealing it. His chest rose sharply beneath the storm of sensations still echoing through him.
His own blood tasted altered now.
Not poisoned.
Connected.
That angered him more than hunger ever had.
But she was alive.
He hooked his fingers into the buckled door and tore it from the frame. Metal shrieked as he cast it into the underbrush. The locked seat belt snapped beneath one pull of his hand, and he slid one arm behind her shoulders and the other beneath her knees, lifting her free with exacting control.
Damaging her further would waste the blood he had already given.
