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The single word rolls across the yard on more than one note.

My head turns before I can fucking stop it.

So does everyone else’s.

One of the brothers near the gate stops mid-step. Another lowers the cigarette halfway to his mouth, and just fucking stands there. Even Sentinel goes rigid beside us, his wings giving a sharp twitch beneath his cut.

The woman’s voice is soft, almost beautiful enough to make me miss what’s happening underneath it, layers of sound folding through each other until Echo’s name seems to hang in the air longer than it should.

My hellhound pushes forward.

Not looking for a fight… listening.

That pisses me off enough to break whatever the fuck her voice just did to me.

I blink hard and tighten my grip on Echo’s hand.

Fuck. The woman isn’t even singing… she’s just talking.

Siren.

And judging by the power she can’t completely keep out of one fucking word, an old one.

Her gaze moves over the brothers spread around the gate before settling somewhere behind me. “I’m looking for the one they call Echo.”

That harmony catches me again, slipping beneath my skin and tugging at my attention until Echo’s fingers clamp around mine.

Everything snaps back to her.

Her pale green eyes are locked on the woman, her body wound tight beside me, but I can still feel Echo beside me in a way that has nothing to do with her hand in mine.

And now that I’ve felt them both, the difference is fucking obvious.

The old siren’s voice pulls.

Echo’s answers something in me.

The siren makes something inside me stop and listen.

Echo makes every fucking part of me want to answer.

The siren’s voice carries something under it, a current running beneath the words, subtle enough that a human would never catch it, but I feel it sink into my chest and tug at something I sure as fuck didn’t permit her to touch. My hellhound snarls low behind my teeth, and I have to work to keep my face from showing exactly how much I want to close the last twenty feet between us and make sure she never says Echo’s name again.

Echo’s fingers tighten around mine.

“Thessaly.” Echo’s voice comes out steady, but I hear what it costs her to keep it that way.

“You look well.” Thessaly takes her time looking Echo over, her eyes moving from her face to the scars at her throat before dropping lower. My hellhound starts getting pissed somewhere around the three-second mark. Then those pale eyes come to me, dropping first to where my hand is wrapped around Echo’s before lifting slowly to my face.

She takes her fucking time.

My hellhound pushes closer to the surface, heat rolling beneath my skin while I stare straight back at her. Whatever Thessaly senses makes something shift in her expression, barely there, but she looks at Echo, then at me again.

My grip tightens around Echo’s fingers.

Yeah. Whatever she’s thinking, she can think it from over there.

“And clearly not alone anymore.” I see the calculation land behind her eyes, watch her rearrange whatever plan she walked in with to account for me, and suddenly I understand. She isn’t looking at a woman anymore.