Isaiah scanned the angel, since Hunt sure as Hel wasn’t going to volunteer anything without being prompted. No sign of the skull-faced helmet that had earned Hunt a nickname whispered down every corridor and street in Crescent City: the Umbra Mortis.

The Shadow of Death.

Unable to decide whether to be relieved or worried at the absence of Hunt’s infamous helmet, Isaiah wordlessly handed Micah’s personal assassin a thin file.

He made sure his dark brown fingers didn’t touch Hunt’s gloved ones. Not when blood still coated the leather, its scent creeping through the room. He recognized the angelic scent in that blood, so the other scent had to be Bryce Quinlan’s.

Isaiah jerked his chin to the white-tiled interrogation room. “Bryce Quinlan, twenty-three years old, half-Fae, half-human. Blood test from ten years ago confirmed she’ll have an immortal life span. Power rating near-negligible. Hasn’t made the Drop yet. Listed as a full civitas. Found in the alley with one of our own, trying to keep his heart from falling out with her bare hands.”

The words sounded so damn clinical. But he knew Hunt was well versed in the details. They both were. They’d been in that alley, after all. And they knew that even here, in the secure observation room, they’d be fools to risk saying anything delicate aloud.

It had taken both of them to get Bryce to her feet, only for her to collapse against Isaiah—not from grief but from pain.

Hunt had realized it first: her thigh had been shredded open.

She’d still been nearly feral, had thrashed as they guided her back to the ground, Isaiah calling for a medwitch as the blood gushed out of her thigh. An artery had been hit. It was a gods-damn miracle she wasn’t dead before they arrived.

Hunt had cursed up a storm as he knelt before her, and she’d bucked, nearly kicking him in the balls. But then he’d pulled off his helmet. Looked her right in the eye.

And told her to calm the fuck down.

She’d fallen completely silent. Just stared at Hunt, blank and hollow. She didn’t so much as flinch with each punch of the staple gun Hunt had pulled from the small medkit built into his battle-suit. She just stared and stared and stared at the Umbra Mortis.

Yet Hunt hadn’t lingered after he’d stapled her leg shut—he’d launched into the night to do what he did best: find their enemies and obliterate them.

As if noticing the blood on his gloves, Hunt swore and peeled them off, dumping them into the metal trash can by the door.

Then the male leafed through Quinlan’s thin file, his shoulder-length black hair slipping over his unreadable face.