Raider flashed her an easy grin, tilting his head at Elena. “Maybe not the squirt though.”
Insult appeared on Elena’s face. “Not true, sperm donor.”
All traces of humor dropped from Raider’ face as a wolf looked out of his eyes. The killer he’d been careful to conceal from his daughter.
Kira shook her head at him. “Not me. I’d never allow that at her age.”
Selene wouldn’t either.
They’d both agreed that the children would remain children for as long as possible. Neither wanted to be responsible for destroying the childhood and innocence of the next generation.
“When?” Kira asked.
Caution finally entered Elena’s expression. An awareness of how deeply she’d stepped in it.
She fiddled with the banister, digging a thumbnail into the wood. “On Almaluk. A Tsavitee war drone tried to stop the Wanderer. I used the ship to run him down.”
Kira blinked, barely reacting as Raider made a choking sound.
“Stop laughing,” she muttered to Raider as he bent at the waist. “It’s not funny.”
Kira focused on Elena over the growing sounds of Raider’s amusement. “And you, stop using my ship as a battering ram to take down Tsavitee infantry.”
Elena snapped a salute at Kira. “Of course, Auntie.”
Kira hesitated in the act of stalking away. Why did she have a feeling Elena didn’t mean those words?
eighteen
Graydon’s anger carried him down the avenue toward the Shining Palace. An awful, fractious thing that spilled in front of him like the preceding edge of a tsunami.
Amila and Solal and the rest of his oshota struggled to keep up, maintaining enough of a distance so they wouldn’t be caught in the seething mass of energy forming around Graydon.
Right now, he was a danger to everyone.
Moreover, he didn’t have it in him to rein in the scorching power of his ki.
His steps slowed and then stopped as he tilted his head back to glare up at the multi-hued colors of the sky as the sun set over the ocean.
This shouldn’t have been the fate of Harding’s daughter. Harlow’s niece should have grown up happy and safe in the bosom of her family and House.
Kira never should have had to think she was a monster for a single second.
Another coil of ki manifested, biting into the avenue and burning a hole into the near indestructible material.
Frustration lived and breathed inside Graydon as the knowledge of everything Kira had gone through settled.
He’d been confronted with the agony of her past before, but it was different hearing it from her own lips while she looked right at him.
It burned that she tried to downplay something that would have broken many.
He suspected it did break the forty-three. That this was part of why they would not return.
How did you face the families of those whose lives you took so you could survive?
That wasn’t all of it Graydon knew. The look Kira had given Jin hinted there was something more.
Something neither wanted any of the Tuann to know.
