Gabriel entered the interrogation room with ease, his face cold and sharp; this was not the Gabriel who had stayed beside his mate until sleep finally took him, nor the witty consort with a blade hidden behind every smile, no, this was the Dominie people had forgotten. The air shifted with his presence, not through force but memory, the kind that lingered in the bones of the guilty long before they saw him.
His memories were returning in fragments, scents caught in the back of his throat, the weight of old instincts threading through his skin, the ache of something unspoken tightening behind his ribs, but he remembered enough. Enough to know what he had done before. Enough to do it again. Ordering death was no longer a question of morality, only necessity. And this time, he had someone to protect. Someone worth the blood.
Gabriel didn't speak right away.
