It reaches him on the third breath.
Not danger.
Not enemy.
Not the sharp metallic promise of a blade or the sour tang of fear that precedes violence.
This scent is wrong in a quieter way.
Ronan stills.
The clinic hums around him, wards layered, neutral magic flattening rank into biology, containment pressure tuned to discourage instinct rather than punish it. His injuries ache dully, information pain rather than crisis, but his focus tightens anyway, snapping inward the way it does after battle, after blood, after survival rewires the senses instead of dulling them.
He inhales again.
There it is. Faint. Threaded. Almost lost beneath antiseptic and ward-scrubbed stone.
Blood.
Old blood, not fresh. Cleaned, sealed, contained. The kind that lingers not because it spilled recently, b
