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Echo watches my face for a second before her hand finally falls away from her throat. “I still check every room for exits before I sit down. Still wake up sometimes wondering if this is the night they finally catch up.”

That lands somewhere deep enough that the anger gives way to something I know a whole lot better. I set the wrench down and tap two fingers against my chest before pointing toward her. Me too.

Her eyes follow the movement, and something in her expression softens.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I thought you might understand.”

For once, I don’t need a voice to tell her she’s right.

Her mouth curves at the corner, not quite a smile, more like relief that I understood without her having to spell it out. “Sentinel told me what Malgrave did… the binding.” She studies my hands, the grease under my nails, the scar cutting across my left knuckle. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think less of you for agreeing to it.”

A grunt claws up out of my throat, rough and low, and I shake my head hard enough that she catches the meaning even without the words or sound to carry it.

“No?” She tilts her head. “Then what?”

I press two fingers to my own throat, then point at hers.

Her hand comes up immediately, fingertips brushing the skin above her collar.

Yeah. That.

Her expression changes, some of that hard edge easing as her fingers stay pressed to the scars around her throat. She slides off the crate and comes closer, stopping a few feet away.

My hand tightens around the wrench as I watch her, and somewhere between her first step and her last, I realize I’ve stopped breathing.

She looks at my throat.

I look at hers.

Neither of us needs a fucking voice to understand what just passed between us.

“You gave up your roar to protect them.” Her voice drops lower, threading through the space between us. “Nobody made you. Sentinel told me that too.”

The hellhound stirs under my skin, restless, drawn to the sound of her in a way it hasn’t been drawn to anything since before the binding took the fight out of it. Heat licks up the back of my throat, wanting the fuck out.

She studies me for a moment, her eyes moving over my face like she’s trying to work out something I haven’t given her the answer to.

“Can I ask you something?” I give her a small nod, even though something tells me I’m not going to like where this is heading. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

Fuck.

Of all the things she could’ve asked, she goes straight for the one thing I’ve been trying like hell to ignore.

“Ever since I walked into that clubhouse, I’ve caught you watching me,” she continues, moving a little closer. “And every time I look back, you act like there’s something you want to say.”

She’s close enough now that I catch the exact shade her eyes go when the overhead light hits them, and I have to fight the urge to reach for her.

Because she’s right, I have been watching her. Been drawn to her since the second Coil brought her through those doors, and I haven’t been able to get the woman out of my fucking head since.

I don’t have an answer I can give her, and even if Malgrave hadn’t stolen my voice, I’m not sure I’d know how to explain what the hell she’s doing to me.

And I don’t have an answer that doesn’t involve grabbing her.

So that’s what I do.

One step closes the distance between us, and I’m not even sure which one of us takes it. One second Echo is standing a few feet away with her fingers resting against the scars around her throat, and the next she’s right-fucking-there, close enough that the low thrum I’ve been feeling from her all night hits me full force.

My hellhound surges forward beneath my skin at the same moment her breath catches, and something passes between us that makes the beast push even harder toward her. Whatever she carries grows stronger this close, sliding through the heat in my chest and finding whatever the fuck is left of mine after Malgrave tore my voice away.