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Sentinel slows beside me, his jaw working as his eyes stay fixed ahead. He knows exactly what he wants to say. The problem seems to be how much of it he’s willing to tell me. “A Hellwarden bound it… Malgrave. He came to the clubhouse yesterday and took Carnage’s roar, his bark, everything, as payment for a hazard the council decided he’d become.” He says it plainly, no flourish, but something underneath the calm pulls taut, a string wound tighter than his voice lets on. “Carnage agreed to it, to protect the rest of us from whatever the council would’ve done otherwise.”

“He gave up his voice for you?”

“For all of us.” Sentinel’s gaze drifts toward the far end of the hallway, toward wherever Carnage is pretending not to care that I’m even in this building. “He’d never say that. He’d tell you it wasn’t a choice worth mentioning. But I was standing there when the Hellwarden finished, and I’ve known that man since before either of us understood what we were. I’ve never seen him go that quiet.”

Those words bother me more than I want them to.

Carnage is a stranger. I’ve known the man for all of a few minutes, yet my mind goes straight back to the roar that dragged me across Kings’ territory. I can still feel the power of it vibrating through my bones, hellfire tangled with something bright and celestial, strong enough to pull an answer from my siren before I even knew what the fuck was happening.

Then I saw him.

Standing in that yard with the same frequency buried inside him and no voice left to carry it.

I remember his mouth opening when he tried to speak to me, the confusion that flashed across his face before the anger took over. The way he tried again, forcing air through a throat that refused to give him anything except that broken scrape. His hand came up around his neck as if he could somehow force the damn thing to work if he pushed hard enough.

He looked fucking furious.

But I saw what came before the anger.

That split second when he realized his voice still wasn’t there.

I know exactly what it costs to have your voice taken from you. I spent sixteen years being told mine belonged to people who’d never once asked if I wanted to give it, so I understand why watching him struggle with his silence has stayed with me. What I don’t understand is why his inability to speak bothers me so damn much, or why I’m already desperate to know what happened to him.

Somehow, that recognition doesn’t stay where I put it. It keeps sliding sideways, past the careful distance I keep from every living thing, curling instead toward the hellhound down the hall with hellfire banked behind his eyes and nothing left to say it with.

“You’re doing it again,” Sentinel says quietly.

“Doing what?”

“Thinking about him.”

I keep my mouth shut because I have no fucking idea what I’d say anyway. Carnage has been in my life for all of five minutes, most of which he spent glaring at me, yet I’m standing here worrying about what happened to his voice like it somehow matters to me.

That alone should probably concern me.

Sentinel watches me for a few seconds, and I can practically see him working things out behind those eyes.

“Don’t,” I warn.

His eyebrow lifts. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.” A small smile pulls at his mouth, which only irritates me more. “Whatever you think you know, angel, you don’t.”

“Never said I did.”

“Good.”

He nods once, still looking far too amused for my liking.

I turn away from him before he gets the chance to notice anything else, especially when I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck I noticed myself.

He steps into the hallway, then pauses with one hand against the doorframe. “Lock it if you want. Nobody’s going to bother you tonight.”

“And tomorrow?”

His mouth twitches. “Tomorrow, you get to meet everyone properly.”

I grimace. “That sounds terrible.”