Liam shrugged. He had no clue either.
I tilted my head to Connor, indicating Liam needed to do something about this.
Liam's smile was pleasant as he leaned over and whispered, "You're head of your house. His actions are yours to deal with."
I silently cursed. A quick glance at Thomas and his lifted eyebrow said Liam wasn't lying.
Great. Just great.
I watched Connor with a grumpy expression.
He looked back inquisitively. "I'm ready to go home now, Aileen."
Slowly, I nodded. Okay, right. That was a perfectly normal statement after ripping out someone's throat.
My smile was strained. "Right. Um, but first, care to explain why you did that?"
I gestured toward his hands.
Connor lifted the hands in question, blinking down at them. His head tilted, confusion crossing his face. "I was ready to go home."
I nodded slowly, still not understanding.
He held out the globs of meat he'd torn from the two men. "They planned to challenge you. Another fight would have delayed our return and put us dangerously close to dawn. I expedited matters."
He certainly had done that, I decided as I scanned the two where they twitched on the ground.
The matter in which he'd done the expediting was up for some debate, but we could discuss that later—
or maybe never. I liked my throat right where it was.
There was a smothered laugh from Nathan, and I flapped my hand at him.
Connor lifted his eyebrows in question. "Was I wrong? Should I have let them challenge you?"
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. He was right, the last thing I would have wanted was another challenge—or two as was the case here.
Even if his method of preventing it were a little extreme.
"We'll talk about this later," I finally settled on saying.
Sofia nodded at the still prone Kat. Matthew and a few other of Sofia's vampires moved forward to help her up.
Sam paused at my side and shook her head. "I've been hoping someone would put her in her place for decades."
"Why not do it yourself?"
Sam was certainly capable enough.
Her smile was crooked. "The brat is a favorite of the Matriarch. I figured Sofia saw something in her I didn't. It made me go easier on her than I should have. You see the result."
She looked at the wreckage of the two cars and clasped my shoulder. "Sorry about your ride. That has to hurt."
"It does," I said mournfully.
There was a shriek that told me Kat had finally seen the messages I'd written on every piece of exposed skin I could find. Since she'd dressed with no regard to weather, there had been a lot of it to fill up.
Sam's smile got wider, filled with pure glee. Behind her, Matthew shook his head. "You know you shouldn't take such pleasure from this."
