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An overwhelming sense of protectiveness washed over him as he listened to the sick bastards discuss Mari and the others as if they were nothing but products to be sold.

The fingers on Mari’s left hand twitched. Severin watched her closely, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. “Do you feel anything off about the female?”

“What are you thinking?” Thana asked? Her misty form shifted downward.

Severin followed, pressing his aura downward, trying to ground himself before the others felt them. Mari’s other fingers moved as he’d seen before. Whether she was warning them or stifling the urge to do something was still unclear. Either way, Severin didn’t want the female to make any moves before they were ready.

“I’m not sure what it is you’re feeling, but I also feel there’s something off. She didn’t have any powers that were apparent before when she was in the cargo container.”

A flash of memory hit him. Women gathered around a large tree, faces lifted to the moon, hands moving in a rhythm he didn’t know—a beautiful dance, in sync and precise, as if they were one.

He hadn’t come across witches often, and he hadn’t learned much about them. That error in his knowledge pissed him off.

“Do you know much about witches?” he asked Thana, hoping his female had answers.

“I’ve met a few in my time. They were very secretive back then, but in the past fifty years or more, I haven’t come across any. Do you think she’s got witch blood in her?” Thana moved away from the males as they split up. He wanted to rip both of the males’ throats out the longer they stayed in the room.

He tried to think more about the witches’ ceremony, but the memory slipped away like water through his fingers, leaving him with a deep sense of loss.

Fucking Hell, his body fought him as if his own instincts were battling each other.

“Sev, you need to keep it together. Your aura is flickering,” Thana warned.

A fundamental sense of wrongness rolled over him as he tried to think about the witches’ ceremony again. Irritation bubbled through his veins when he hit a spiked wall in his mind.

“There’s a strange block in my mind, one I would never have come up with,” he explained.

“Well, stop thinking about that until we’re away from here. It’s too dangerous for us.”

His heart ached at the fear in Thana’s words. “Don’t worry about me, mo ghaol. I’ll scan their minds one at a time. Keep safe.”

Severin slipped into the male named Earl’s ear, irritating him. Earl’s focus lifted from the female, brows pinching. Taking advantage of the diversion, Severin found a splice inside. Five other underground facilities looked eerily similar to the one they were standing in, each holding numerous individuals, females and males. Leaving the male, he went into the next one and did the same. Through their link, he showed Thana what he found, etching the captives' faces into his memory.

The second male showed the same details as Earl. Disgust rolled through him at the images of the male and the others like him doing unspeakable things to strapped-down, drugged, and unwilling beings. He wanted to edit his findings before sharing them with Thana.

A burst of feminine power pushed at him. He exited the fucker’s memories, leaving the same way he’d gone in, possibly bursting the eardrum on his way out.

“You’re truly a brute,” Thana’s laughter whispered over him.

Severin let an imaginary hand feather over her misty form as a lover’s touch. “Only for our enemies.”

They couldn’t leave Mari strapped down at the mercy of the hunters acting like doctors. While he’d been in their minds, he hadn’t found one iota of medical background earned through true schooling like Harvard, John Hopkins, Stanford, or any other he’d seen.

He sent his mana out, directing several bits of himself into the other rooms to search for hidden captives. Bless the Goddess, he found none. Once all his mana returned, he exhaled and sent the info to Thana. They’d move together, take out the two males at the same time. Precise and dead would be the best death for them, even though Severin preferred to make them suffer.

“I’ll take out Earl. Do you have the other?” he asked Thana, watching her answer closely. If he didn’t like the way she spoke, the way her heart raced, or the way her breathing quickened…hell, if anything seemed off, he’d take them both out and say fuck pissing her off.

“You need to control your overprotective shit, Severin. I’m not a helpless little thing who needs the big male to stand before her.”

“Oh, I know that more than anyone else. I just hate feeling helpless myself.” The only time he’d experienced anything close had been when Bianca took her life. She’d been weak and selfish. The backlash he’d faced⁠—

“I’m sorry, mo ghaol. I will never do anything that would put you, me, or anyone we care about in danger. Trust me as I trust you, Severin.”

He sighed, then nodded. They shifted and moved behind their targets. Her movements were sharp and agitated, but swift. He sliced through the male’s throat with a wire he created the moment he became solid, allowing the head to slide off unheeded. Neither male made a sound, but poor Mari’s gaze widened.

“Are you okay?” Thana asked.

A chill ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the dead bodies at their feet. Something felt off. Wrong. His vampire hearing perked up, bristling at the intrusion on their territory.