The tether with Veya had already forced one unwanted complication into his blood. He would not permit another.
So why the hell was he still sitting here?
Why did every sound of the witch’s pain catch somewhere beneath his ribs as though a hook had been set there?
She stirred, her face tightening as a soft whimper escaped her. The sound was small, involuntary, and painfully human.
Rhen’s jaw clenched.
“She’s just a witch,” he said beneath his breath, turning the words into an order. “Nothing more.”
The declaration should have settled the matter.
It did not.
A pressure had begun to build behind his ears, accompanied by a faint ringing that did not belong to the room. Something tugged at the edge of him with each breath she took, as though the world itself were trying to drag him toward a truth he had no intention of seeing.
* * *
Pain tore through her like a living thing, claws sunk deep enough to shred every nerve until she could no longer tell where her body ended and the storm began.
She had known it would hurt and had understood the risk the instant she felt Cole’s power thrashing inside him, but this existed beyond ordinary pain; it was punishment.
Her eyes opened briefly to a room swimming in shadow and blurred shapes. Darkness. Firelight. An unfamiliar ceiling. Breathing that did not sound like her own. She tried to focus on something—anything—that might anchor her, but another wave struck, jerking her body against the mattress and trapping a broken cry in her throat.
Every inhale felt like glass.
Half-formed memories dragged themselves through the haze: the brothers, the compound, and Cole dying with the storm trapped beneath his skin, his veins lit as though lightning had been buried in his flesh. Then the old elemental command had seized her with a force she could not resist—take it, take it, take it—and she had obeyed.
Now the storm lived inside her.
A sob escaped as she tried to curl inward against something that could not be blocked. Power roared through her veins, nothing like her own magic but something crueler and more violent, born of immortal blood and battle.
Rhen’s name flashed through her mind like lightning, bringing neither comfort nor safety, but fear.
The Charon, with silver eyes and a presence that thinned the air around him. The male who had looked at her as though he could peel her apart and study every piece until her secrets lay exposed.
She should have wanted him gone.
Yet even through the fever and the shaking, she could feel him nearby: a weight in the room, a dangerous stillness, a storm cloud held perfectly motionless above her.
She groaned, and her lashes fluttered again. A shape leaned forward in the dimness—broad shoulders, a hard jaw, and darkness gathered so closely around him that the room seemed to belong to his silence.
His silver eyes had burned with distrust and hatred for what she was, but something else had existed beneath it, buried far below the rage: a fracture, a kind of ruin so ancient it had calcified into something merciless. For one disorienting moment, he had not seemed merely like a killer, but like something broken so thoroughly that it had learned to weaponize the damage.
Then another wave struck, and pain drowned everything.
It came with such violence that her thoughts tore loose and scattered like ash. Her body shook hard enough to rattle the bed while she tried to hold on to images of Rhen, Cole, and the other brothers, but the storm allowed no memory, only suffering.
Her vision blurred. Her breath became shallow and jagged, and every muscle fought to keep her body intact while the power tried to split it from within.
She clutched the blanket in a weak, frantic grip, as though cloth and warmth might protect her from what was devouring her alive.
“Please,” she whispered, tears burning at the corners of her eyes. “Please… make it stop.”
No answer came.
Only the storm.
