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Hell tears through me.

Heat punches straight through skin and muscle before driving deeper, so fucking hot my back locks and my teeth grind together. It isn’t my hellfire. Mine lives inside me, answers me, belongs there. This burns through me like something forced into a place it has no fucking right to be.

My hellhound throws himself against it.

Malgrave’s grip tightens.

The heat keeps pushing deeper until it reaches the hollow place where my roar used to live, and every muscle in my body pulls taut.

I know what’s supposed to be there now.

More importantly, I know what Malgrave told us he did to it.

Bound.

Contained.

Held.

Except that isn’t what this feels like.

Something catches inside my chest, and my breath stops. Beneath all that burning pressure, something tugs.

Once.

Again.

My hand shoots up and clamps around Malgrave’s wrist as the sensation digs deeper, catching at whatever remains of my roar and pulling against it.

Malgrave’s black eyes lift to mine, but he keeps going.

The pull becomes stronger.

Fuck containment.

A binding should hold something where it is, lock it down, and stop it from getting loose.

This is moving in the opposite fucking direction.

Whatever Malgrave has buried inside me is dragging at my roar, drawing it away from me piece by piece while his hand stays locked around my throat.

Rage detonates through the bond. My hellhound slams forward so violently that my vision darkens, my claws threatening beneath my fingertips while every instinct I have screams the same thing.

He’s taking it.

My grip crushes harder around Malgrave’s wrist, but his expression never changes.

And suddenly Echo’s words aren’t a theory anymore.

He’s not keeping my roar contained.

He’s fucking harvesting it.

Piece by piece, thread by fucking thread, every damn visit, every hand around my throat, another sliver gone missing while he calls it a checkup.

My hellhound screams inside my chest, but the sound never makes it past where Malgrave’s grip has my voice locked down tight, and all I can do is stand here and feel my own roar bleed out through a wound that’s never once been allowed to close.

Then something else moves underneath it.