The sofa suddenly moved beneath her.
*
Keith didn’t mean toshift.
Blake’s confession had filled him with a cold, uncontrollable fury, so all-consuming that for a minute he hadn’t been able to think at all.
Blake was the reason Iris had crashed. He was the reason her truck had crumpled like a soda can, flattened against the implacable magical barrier. He had tried to kill her, and only luck—and Iris’s own strength—had kept her alive. But he’d still hurt her terribly. He’d still put her through a year-long hell of pain and misery and self-doubt.
And then he had the absolute nerve to say it was for her own good.
Keith couldn’t take it. Blake’s patronizing self-justifications finished him off, and all he knew was that he couldn’t listen to another second of it.
He reached for his anger and let it propel him. He reached for his strength, for the wildest, most elemental part of him, and his unicorn answered.
His front hooves hit the floor while part of him was still on the sofa, and then his unicorn’s back legs were kicking cushions out of the way and knocking the sofa back behind him.
He lunged at Blake, his head down and his sharp horn at the ready.
Blake had thought Keith was as heavily drugged as Iris, so Keith had surprise on his side. But getting free of the sofa had cost him precious time and given Blake the split second he needed to adjust.
Blake darted left, and Keith’s horn ran through his shoulder instead of his chest.
Blake shouted with pain. He grabbed at Keith’s horn before Keith could slide it out, trying to slow him down.
“How?” Blake breathed, looking at him. “How are you doing this?”
We will do anything for our mate,Keith’s unicorn said, even though Keith was the only one who could hear it.
Since Keith couldn’t wrest his horn out of Blake’s grip, he lashed out with his hooves. Unfortunately, Blake had finally gotten his brain in gear. He shifted too.
His transformation freed Keith’s horn, at least. But it also gave him his own, and he used it to deflect Keith’s wildly striking hooves.
Blake thrashed under Keith’s attack. The collision of their horns and hooves threw off magical, metallic showers of blue-white sparks. Blake landed a hit to Keith’s nose, stunning him and making him reel back.
If Blake had chosen to kill him right then, Keith wasn’t sure he could have stopped him.
But Blake was a coward. His attack on Iris had been passive and bloodless, at least on his end. He hadn’t needed to hurt her directly. He hadn’t even needed to watch. He’d used poison to sap Keith and Iris’s strength before he dared to make a move against them.
The one time he’d actually risked a physical fight with someone, it had been so he could kill Lady Marianne before she could tell anyone his secret. But Lady Marianne had been old and delicate, and he’d taken her by surprise.
Keith was young and strong and furious, and Blake was terrified of facing him directly for even a moment longer than he had to. He couldn’t stand to do it without any tricks up his sleeve. The second Keith was dazed, Blake turned and fled, galloping towards the back of the house.
Keith wanted to chase him, but he had to make sure Iris was okay. She’d collapsed across the sofa when he’d moved, and it looked like she was completely unconscious now.
Fear went through him like a bolt of lightning. What if Blake had accidentally given them too much of the drug? After all, Keith had only had about half a dose, and he’d still felt so sluggish and uncoordinated that he’d barely been able to move. The guy must have used enough to knock out a horse—
A horse.
His human form had barely been able to cope with the half-dose of the drug, but once he’d shifted, he’d felt basically fine. A horse—or a unicorn—could easily manage a paralytic and tranquilizer that would knock a human out cold.
If Iris could shift, and stay in her shift form, she’d be able to handle whatever Blake had given her.
Keith turned human again. He instantly felt wobbly and woozy, but he forced himself to stay on his feet. He reached down and shook Iris, trying to wake her up.
“Whuh?” Iris said indistinctly. She looked at him with drug-fogged eyes.
Right. She was groggy when she first woke up even on the best of mornings, let alone when her brother-in-law had drugged her and confessed to trying to kill her. And, of course, the paralytic part of the drug meant that she could barely move her lips. Keith just had to hope that she was still with it enough to understand him.
