Buff looks between us like a Labrador trying to follow a tennis match—head swiveling, confusion written all over him.
“What?” I ask slowly, heat edging into my voice.
Froggy lifts his chin, defiant. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Something in me shifts. Slides. My wolf presses forward, coldly focused. I step toward him, my voice dropping lower than my human throat should be able to manage.
“Freddie,” I say, each syllable edged like a blade. “What did you take?”
“Nothing.”
“Try again. With the truth this time.”
He winces almost imperceptibly. I stare him down.
“Fine!” he snaps.
He stomps toward a fallen log, reaches behind it, and pulls out her tablet.
Her tablet.
The one with the JAWS program she needs for texts, emails, reading signage. That tablet is her entire lifeline to accessibility and independence.
My vision goes white at the edges, and my entire body goes cold, as if the fury drains the heat right out of my blood.
“You—” My voice shakes with the force of trying not to explode, not to tear into him. “You took that from her?”
Buff takes a step back.
Froggy swallows, suddenly looking a lot less defiant.
And I am one breath, one heartbeat, away from losing the last shred of control I have.
“You stole her accessibility tablet.”
Froggy turns his head like a petulant cub caught red-handed. “It’s not like she can see it’s gone.”
My vision blacks out. I grab him by the front of his shirt.
The next second, his back cracks against a tree so hard the bark splinters. Leaves shake loose from the impact.
“Don’t…”I snarl. The sound isn’t even animal. It’s ripped from someplace deep and ancient, a promise carved in blood and instinct.“…ever say that again.”
Froggy’s breath stutters. His pulse spikes against my grip, and I can smell the fear rolling off him.
Buff takes a cautious step forward. “Jason?—”
I don’t look away from Froggy. Because something in me has snapped. Because that tablet is her world. The thought of her reaching for it and finding nothing, of being made vulnerable because of him, hits me in a place I didn’t know existed until tonight.
My claws prickle under my fingers.
“Say anything like that about her again,” I growl, breath hot, voice shaking with barely leashed violence, “and I’ll make what the Eustace crowd do look like Sunday school.”
Froggy swallows hard. He believes me.
He fucking should.
But that doesn’t cool the fury burning through my ribs. I turn to the tablet.
