I didn’t respond, wrenching my gaze away to stare at the wall instead.
“Am I wrong?” Pierce asked.
My mouth was a tight line. I didn’t have to answer that. Nobody knew for sure what would’ve happened without Maxwell’s presence to tear me away from the inner demon.
“Theo,” Pierce said gently.
“I might have been able to resist just fine without him,” I mumbled. “You and Adriel don’t know every single possibility of the universe.”
I felt myself becoming belligerent, but was unable to stop it. My emotions were too chaotic, storming too roughly in my head for me to calm down.
Thankfully Pierce was the more mild and harmonious of my brothers, and also the one with psychiatry in his background. He didn’t rile me up the way Adriel did.
Pierce touched my shoulder affectionately. “Do you know why Adriel was so upset?”
I shook my head. What possible reason could he have except for being the stuck-up old vamp he always was?
“Do you remember before he and Caleb were dating? When they had just moved into the cottage?”
After Caleb visited the mansion for the first time and got scared half to death by Margaret, he was given permission to stay on a cottage on our property with Adriel as a personal bodyguard.
“Yeah,” I said. “I used to go over and play videogames and--oh.”
As the realization hit me, Pierce nodded to confirm. “You scared Caleb. It was meant as a joke, of course, and we all knew that. But you let your fangs out to tease him. Caleb panicked because of his encounter with Margaret.”
“Adriel was pissed at me, even though I felt really guilty about it,” I said, miserably remembering the incident.
“And now this happens,” Pierce continued. “Both incidents were only stopped because someone else was present. That time, it was Adriel. In this case, Maxwell.”
“So Adriel thinks that if I was alone and my inner demon came out…”
“Then it would lead to unnecessary death. Yes.”
I shut my eyes and slumped back against the chair. “So, what? I’m just supposed to sit in the mansion and never, ever be in contact with humans again?”
I was joking, but apparently Pierce wasn’t. His face remained stoic. I shot to my feet.
“Pierce, you know I can’t do that,” I shouted. “There’s two humans living here! I’ve never hurt either of them, and you know I wouldn’t!”
“I know,” he said gently. “But Adriel is afraid. He won’t admit it, but I can see it in his eyes. Especially with his daughter being so young, he doesn’t want to lose his mate.”
My heart shattered. Anger and sadness twisted my stomach into knots. “I would never hurt Caleb or Benji. I only hurt that man because I was protecting Maxwell! And I didn’t even do anything besides scare him.”
Pierce took a moment to think. He steepled his fingers together. He finally spoke after great deliberation.
“Let me ask you something, Theo,” he began. “When you were protecting Maxwell, what did it feel like?”
What did he mean by that?
I shrugged. “Like I had to defend him? Because he was being threatened?”
“How would you have felt if Maxwell was actually injured?”
“What kind of question is that?” I asked, bristling. “I’d be furious at myself for letting it happen! Except I wouldn’t let it happen in the first place.”
Pierce nodded slowly, like he knew something I didn’t. Suddenlybothof my brothers were starting to annoy me.
“Imagine Maxwell was injured,” Pierce said. “How would you feel?”
