Chapter 4 #3
“No. A maker tether isn’t the same as a claim. But until the transition settles, the wards will read her through him, and neither of them can simply walk away from what has formed.”
Cole let out a dark laugh.
“So what now? We let him play jailer with his new toy? This isn’t only about him, Sule. My loyalty is to Leena and the child.”
Sule’s gaze hardened, his voice dropping to a lethal edge.
“Do not doubt for a second that I would let harm reach Leena or our child. Rhen is not your enemy. His loyalty to this clan runs as deeply as yours, and when it comes to protecting Leena, I trust him with her life.”
Malakai leaned forward, his chair creaking beneath his weight.
So what is the plan? Contain her? Question her?
“Both,” Sule said. “She stays in the warded eastern suite until the transition settles. No one enters alone. Leena remains behind the inner protections, and Rhen does not decide the female’s fate without this council.”
His gaze moved across the room.
“The tether may be the only thing stabilizing her transition. It also gives Rhen the best chance of sensing what she is carrying before it breaches the inner wards. That makes him useful. It does not make him trustworthy where she is concerned.”
The room went still.
No one said it aloud, but they all knew what Rhen was capable of when instinct overruled command.
Sule’s voice carried finality like a blade.
“It is a controlled risk. Rhen’s loyalty to this clan—to us—is absolute. But if this threatens Leena, the child, or any one of you…”
He paused, his gaze sharp enough to cut.
“I’ll end it myself.”
The tension shifted.
Not peace.
Not agreement.
Something closer to alignment.
Cole was the first to speak.
“Whatever you say, boss.” He pushed his chair back with a sharp scrape. “But if he gets a personal prisoner, I want one too.”
Dax snatched the marble paperweight from the desk and hurled it at Cole’s head.
Cole’s hand shot up, catching it an inch from his face.
“Dick,” Dax muttered, smirking. “We don’t need playthings. Feed, fuck, fight, and move on.”
Cole rolled his eyes and tossed the paperweight onto the table with a clunk.
“Spoken like a man who hasn’t been laid in a decade.”
Malakai released a tired breath but didn’t intervene.
Sule’s expression remained carved in stone, though weariness flickered briefly behind his eyes as he looked between them.
“None of us has to like this,” he said. “But we protect our own, and Rhen’s blood brought her under clan law. Until we know what she is, she remains contained and protected.”
He paused.
“That does not make her trusted.”
Silence fell like ash.
The fire crackled, casting long shadows across hard faces and clenched jaws. No one moved. No one spoke.
The shift in their world settled into the room like smoke.
There would be fallout.
There always was.
* * *
The fire crackled low, throwing long shadows across the stone walls and the hard lines of Rhen’s silhouette. His hands flexed at his sides as he paced before it, frustration riding him hard.
Veya moaned again, a broken, fevered sound that cut through the silence.
His jaw locked.
The transition had begun.
His blood was inside her now, rewriting her from the inside out and forcing her body across a threshold it had never been built to survive. The tether crawled into place like a living thing, threading itself through bone and blood, tightening around his spine.
He didn’t want this.
Not one fucking part of it.
Rhen grabbed a half-empty bottle of bourbon from the nearby table and poured himself a shot. The amber liquid caught the firelight, gleaming like blood.
He downed it in one swallow.
The burn did nothing to cut the pressure in his chest.
He looked back at the bed.
Veya writhed beneath the sheets, her body slick with sweat, her breathing shallow and panicked. Her visible skin was flushed and clammy, her lips trembling with every strained exhale.
Every convulsion dragged through the tether and raked across his nerves, an invasion that enraged him more each time it happened.
He dragged a hand down his face, jaw clenched and shoulders rigid.
She didn’t know what she was becoming.
She didn’t know what his blood had done.
And she sure as hell didn’t know what it meant to be bound to something like him.
The fire popped, a spark cracking through the room as another fever chill shook her body.
Rhen took one step toward the bed.
Then stopped.
The medic had already regulated the room, covered her, and done everything the transition allowed. There was nothing his hands could add except another complication.
A low, tortured sound broke past her lips.
The transition wanted more of his blood.
The tether demanded proximity.
He hated both.
Veya was not salvation.
She was not redemption.
She was an unknown human carrying hostile magic and enough of his blood to make her his responsibility.
Nothing more.
Rhen downed the rest of the bourbon in a brutal swallow, the burn trailing fire through his throat. It settled heavily in his gut, bitter as regret.
It was going to be a long night.
And it was only the beginning.