"Yes." Ruvan doesn't look away from my arm. "Anyone else want to discuss it?"
Silence.
"Good. Ridge, handle the body. Gray Streak, get medical supplies. Everyone else—" He finally looks up, and his expression makes several people step back. "Finish breakfast. Now."
They eat. Mechanically, desperately, but they eat. Forks scraping plates while a body cools on the floor and my blood drips and Ruvan's hands stay gentle on my arm.
"You need stitches," he says quietly.
"I said that already."
"You did."
We're looking at each other, really looking, and something hot and complicated passes between us. His shadows are still warm around my arm, and I can feel his pulse through his fingertips, quick and angry and protective.
"You didn't have to kill her."
"Yes, I did."
"She was just upset about her friends."
"She hurt you." He says it simply. Like the equation is that basic. "No one hurts you."
The feeling in my chest isn't just warm now. It's burning. He killed someone for making me bleed, and I should be horrified but instead I'm noticing how his shirt pulls across his shoulders, how his hands are steady despite the exhaustion, how his eyes go soft when he looks at my wound.
"I should..." I gesture vaguely at my arm. "Bandages."
"Medical supplies are in the second-floor bathroom." He helps me stand, hand on my elbow. "Can you walk?"
"It's my arm, not my legs."
But he stays close anyway, shadows hovering, ready to catch me if I stumble. The dining room empties behind us—people fleeing to process what just happened. Someone's definitely going to have to clean that blood. The wallpaper's ruined. We just put that up yesterday.
In the bathroom—one of seven glorious bathrooms—he's efficient with the supplies. Cleaning, stitching, bandaging. His hands are perfectly steady despite not sleeping properly in days.
"You need rest," I tell him while he ties off the bandage.
"Later."
"You said that yesterday."
"Yesterday I didn't have twenty-eight hostile additions to manage."
"Twenty-seven now."
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. "Twenty-seven."
We're standing very close. Close enough that I can smell him—shadow and copper and that soap he uses. Close enough to see the exhaustion he's hiding, the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes keep dropping to my mouth.
"I should make you coffee," I say, because the air's getting thick and complicated. "Real coffee. Not that terrible stuff from the warehouse."
"Coffee." He's still looking at my mouth.
"Yes. Coffee. The drink. With caffeine." I'm babbling now. "You probably need caffeine. And food. You're running on fumes and violence again, aren't you? That's not sustainable—"
"Olivia."
"What?"
