Nara arrived with her slight, animal-aware asymmetry, her Beast-Touched senses already reading the courtyard's emotional temperature. She said nothing. She positioned herself and waited.
Marla arrived last, adjusting her glasses, her thick body moving with the deliberate pace of a woman who refused to be seen running even under duress. She stopped at the edge of the group and pressed her thighs together through her skirt.
They looked at him.
All five.
Their eyes carried the same thing in different flavors — fear of abandonment wearing the costume of concern. They had watched nineteen women vanish from a courtyard in the space of two minutes. They had watched the crowd of bodies they had been part of all afternoon simply cease to exist.
They felt the specific smallness of being what remained.
Preet's hands found her own skirt fabric and gripped it without her permission. Celia pressed closer to Gia. Nara's nostrils flared. Marla's jaw tightened.
