The stillness did not lie.
“No…”
The word left him as a wrecked whisper.
Humans.
This was why he had always hated them.
Not because they lacked courage.
Not because their lives were brief.
Because they were built like glass.
The world breathed wrong near them and they shattered. No regeneration. No second chance. One failing piece of flesh and everything they were simply stopped.
His fangs descended as grief turned feral inside him.
Hot.
Violent.
Useless.
There was nothing to fight.
Nothing to kill.
No throat he could tear open to reverse what had happened.
Rhen held Leena more tightly.
His head tipped back.
The roar that tore from him shook the chamber.
It was not a cry shaped for a human throat. It carried centuries of violence, restraint, and a love he had despised himself for possessing.
There was no hiding it now.
Not from Mary.
Not from the medic.
Not from the stronghold carrying his grief through every stone.
At the exact moment Leena’s life vanished, the royal thread woven through the ancient wards went dark.
Rhen’s grief struck the breach.
The protections flared white through the walls.
Then they ruptured.
For one terrible heartbeat, raw magic surged outward from the stronghold, racing through the streets of New Orleans like a shock wave.
Every creature sensitive to power would feel it.
