Whoever had left them might still be searching for her.
That made the source a threat to the compound.
The tether translated the marks into trespass anyway.
Rhen’s fangs dropped as a low growl curled through the room.
Violence stirred beneath his ribs, cold and ancient. He wanted a name. A face. Something he could tear apart if it followed her to his door.
But none of that mattered tonight.
Tonight she had to remain alive long enough to answer his questions.
Rhen exhaled slowly, his shoulders rigid beneath black leather as he fought the urge to tear the room apart simply because someone else had already done damage to what his blood now marked.
He couldn’t afford to lose control.
Not while the tether still burned through him like a living thing.
“Send for me if her pulse changes,” he ordered.
Then he left before instinct persuaded him to stay.
* * *
Sule watched his brothers gather in the war room as tension spread through the compound like smoke beneath a locked door.
No one spoke immediately.
They didn’t need to.
The air already carried the weight of something shifting beneath their feet.
Dax entered first, now wearing a clean black shirt beneath his coat. His massive frame moved with the quiet confidence of a male built for violence, ice-blue eyes locking briefly onto Sule in silent acknowledgment. Dax had always been dependable when blood started spilling—the first through the door and the last to leave a brother behind.
Malakai followed moments later, reading the room before he took his seat. Calculation sharpened every line of his face.
Cole came last, moving stiffly as he lowered himself into a chair. One forearm rested protectively across the fresh stitches beneath his shirt, a scowl carved across his features.
Sule remained standing.
One hand gripped the back of a chair tightly enough to make the wood creak, his expression controlled but strained around the edges.
“I spoke to Rhen,” he said, his voice low and measured.
That alone tightened the room.
Sule rarely lost composure. If he sounded this controlled, anger already sat dangerously close beneath the surface.
“He gave her enough blood at the edge of death to begin a transition,” Sule continued. “Because she drank directly from him and his blood pulled her back from the brink, it also initiated a maker tether.”
Silence followed.
Cole surged upright, pain flashing across his face as his chair scraped over stone.
“What the fuck do you mean, tether?”
“A maker tether forms when our blood drags a dying human across the threshold,” Sule said. “It stabilizes the transition and allows the maker to feel what the body is enduring. Pain. Hunger. Fear. Rejection. Sometimes more, if the blood is old enough or the magic around it is corrupted.”
