The heretic tilted his head.
A faint smirk appeared beneath the shadow of his hood.
Rhen stepped forward.
Cole saw the movement.
“Rhen. Wait.”
For a fraction of a second, Rhen stopped.
The heretic’s attention shifted toward the surviving rogues.
Pressure moved through the alley.
It began as a crawling wrongness against the skin before sinking deeper. The remaining rogues jerked as though invisible lines had tightened around their limbs. Their disordered movements suddenly aligned, and their hunger became coordinated aggression.
Cole blocked a directed strike and looked toward Malakai.
“He is controlling them.”
Malakai’s hands flashed through a combat signal.
Take the heretic now.
Rhen never looked away from the hooded figure.
“He is mine.”
He crossed the alley with speed too fast for human sight.
The heretic’s smirk failed when Rhen reached him.
Rhen caught him by the throat and drove him into the wall hard enough to break mortar. The heretic’s feet left the ground, his hands clawing uselessly against Rhen’s wrist.
Rhen leaned close enough for the other male to smell the blood covering him.
“Do you want to play?”
His fingers tightened.
The bones beneath them began to strain.
The heretic’s arrogance disappeared beneath panic as he fought for air his damaged throat could no longer draw.
“Not quite as clever now,” Rhen said.
For one brief moment, the outcome appeared inevitable.
Then the atmosphere shifted.
The change carried no wind or sound. Pressure slid against Rhen’s skin and entered behind his eyes like a thin blade seeking a weakness.
His grip tightened reflexively.
The heretic’s ruined mouth curved.
“You cannot stop it.”
