His eyes narrowed.
“If he follows you here, he becomes a threat to this compound.”
“He won’t.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know him.”
“So do his hands, apparently.”
Veya flinched as if he had struck her.
Rhen felt the reaction through the tether and hated the answering surge of violence it provoked.
He crushed it.
Her gaze dropped to the sheets.
“I was already running,” she said. “There wasn’t much to go back to.”
“That does not make this acceptable.”
She looked at him again.
“I didn’t say it did.”
Something cold and weary lived behind her eyes.
Not acceptance.
Exhaustion.
The kind carved into someone who had survived by enduring whatever came next.
“I don’t know whether to thank you or hate you,” she whispered.
“Do neither until you understand what you are.”
Her mouth tightened.
“And what happens now?”
“You remain in this room until the transition settles.”
“And then?”
“You learn control.”
“What if I can’t?”
Rhen’s expression did not change.
“Then I put you down.”
The blood drained from her face.
“You’d kill me?”
