Page 24

My hellhound loses his fucking mind. He slams toward the surface so hard that heat floods my veins, my jaws opening somewhere beneath my skin as he tries to force out a bark.

I feel the sound build.

Feel it hit my throat.

Malgrave speaks another word, and the bark collapses before it can escape.

My hand flies to my neck as the beast tries again, reaching deeper this time for the growl that has lived in us for as long as I can remember. That low warning has always been there, rumbling beneath my words when I’m pissed, vibrating through my chest when the hellhound is close enough to show his teeth.

I feel it climbing.

Feel Malgrave catch it.

And then there’s another wrench inside my chest that leaves the hellhound throwing himself against me with absolutely nowhere for the sound to go.

That’s when the panic really fucking hits.

Because this isn’t silence.

Silence is choosing not to make a sound.

This is having the sound taken away.

My hellhound keeps trying anyway, frantic, forcing everything he has toward a throat that no longer knows what to do with it. His jaws snap around a snarl I feel but never hear. His chest heaves around another bark that dies somewhere behind my tongue. Then he digs all the way down for the roar Malgrave took first, throwing enough force behind it that pain rips through my ribs.

My mouth opens wide, and air tears from my lungs, but the room stays fucking silent. Something inside the beast changes. I feel it in the way he stops fighting for half a second, confused by an emptiness neither of us has ever known.

There’s less of us. That thought hits harder than anything Malgrave has done to my body.

But he isn’t finished.

His hand stays locked around my throat while the words keep coming, and the pressure shifts.

Moves higher.

Deeper.

Past the hellhound, and straight toward the part that belongs only to me.

My stomach fucking drops because I finally understand.

He didn’t come here just to take the beast’s voice.

He is taking mine too.

I feel the next pull catch higher in my throat, and suddenly every word I’ve ever thrown at my brothers seems to rush through my head at once. Every argument, every joke, every insult, every ‘fuck you,’ every time I called one of them brother. Every stupid-fucking-conversation I never once thought could be the last.

Sentinel’s name hits me hardest.

I try to say it.

“Sen…” The sound breaks apart in my throat.

Malgrave’s fingers tighten.

I fight harder. “Sen…ti…” Nothing.

Fuck.