It rips down the half-formed bond like claws.
My body reacts before thought forms.
“Lani—” I choke.
As the words leave my mouth, I’m already moving.
The others don’t question it.
They feel it too – less sharp, less immediate – but enough.
I don’t take the path. I don’t use the gate. I vault the fence.
The impact on the other side barely registers. I clear the garden in three strides, the scent of her fear thick in the air before I even reach the front door.
It’s open.
That alone is wrong.
I don’t knock. I don’t announce. I storm through the hallway and into the lounge just in time to see him.
A man has her pressed against the wall.
His hand is locked around her wrist.
A syringe gleams in his other hand.
For half a second, everything slows.
Her scent is erratic – fear, adrenaline, something dangerously close to heat igniting under stress.
The man turns his head at the sound of my entry.
And I somehow recognise him. The similarities. Shared DNA. Her father.
The resemblance is obvious now in the bone structure, the eyes.
But there is nothing paternal in the way he’s holding her.
There is ownership.
Control.
Violation.
Something inside me fractures completely.
I don’t remember crossing the distance.
One moment he exists in front of me.
The next, I have him.
My hand closes around his throat with enough force to lift him clean off the ground.
The syringe clatters across the floor.
His back hits the wall hard enough to crack plaster.