"You're coming with me." His breath burns hot against my ear. "Right now. We're walking out that door and you're never going to see that animal again."
"No."
I drive my elbow into his ribs. The same ribs the bat struck. He gasps, a wet strangled sound, and his fingers loosen in my hair. I spin free and put the length of the great room between us, the bat up, my feet planted, blood dripping from my forearm onto the hardwood floor.
Peter straightens, the knife still in his hand, blood on his lip where he's bitten through it. He stares at me with disbelief and mounting fury, because I'm not supposed to fight back. I'm supposed to take it.
That Sarah died on the back of an orc's motorcycle months ago.
And then Knox arrives.
He doesn't come through the door. He comes through the wall.
Drywall and timber explode inward as seven feet of feral orc tears through the side of the clubhouse like it's paper. Dust billows through the red emergency light, and Knox stands in the wreckage with his fists at his sides and his eyes black from lid to lid.
The two Humans First men on the porch take one look and run. Their boots pound across the gravel and disappear into the dark.
Peter tries to follow them.
Knox crosses the room and catches him by the throat. Lifts him off the ground with one hand, holds him there with no more effort than picking up a child. Peter's feet kick at empty air. The knife tumbles from his fingers and clatters across the floor. His hands claw at the massive green fist crushing his windpipe, but he might as well be clawing at concrete.
His intent crashes through the bond—kill. Protect. Destroy.Nothing remains but the predator and the threat to his mate. I can feel him deciding. Can feel the muscles in his arm tightening, preparing to squeeze until something gives.
"Knox."
I don't shout. I speak his name the way I'd speak to a child waking from a nightmare. Quiet. Certain.
He doesn't respond. Peter's face turns purple. His legs stop kicking.
"Knox, honey, look at me."
That black gaze finds mine. No recognition. No warmth. Just the bottomless dark.
"Don't become him." I step closer, one hand extended, palm open. Reaching for Knox. "I need you here. Our baby needs you here. And I don't want our child's father to be someone who kills a man with his bare hands, even a man who deserves it. Come back to me."
A shudder runs through his body, rolling from his shoulders down his arms to the hand locked around Peter's throat. The black in his gaze fractures. Dark brown bleeds through, slow and uneven, and his breathing changes—ragged now, labored, the sound of a man dragging himself back from a place where reason holds no ground.
His eyes find mine again, and this time I see Knox in them. My Knox. Battered and breathing hard and fighting his way back from the edge for me.
He drops Peter.
The man crumples to the floor, gasping, clutching his throat with both hands. He curls into himself the way I used to curl when he finished with me, and the recognition of it hits me in my gut. I don't feel sorry for him. I thought I would, and I don't.
Finn and Rex burst through what remains of the front door, weapons drawn, and behind them the compound floods with headlights and engine noise as the rest of the brothers roll in. Knox hasn't moved. He stands over Peter with his fists opening and closing, the feral dark still flickering at the edges of his gaze. I cross the room and put my hand on his arm, and I feel the tremor running through him—the cost of pulling back, the price of choosing mercy over instinct.
"You did the right thing," I tell him.
His hand covers mine.
His hands won't stop shaking. Through the rest of it—Finn and Rex securing Peter, the brothers sweeping the compound, Jess checking Diesel's vitals—Knox stands at the edge of the room with his fists clenched against his thighs, and I can see the tremor from across the room. He won't let anyone close except me.
When I bring him water, he wraps both hands around the glass and grips it so hard I'm afraid it'll crack. The shaking doesn't stop. Not when the brothers haul Peter into the chair. Not when Diesel comes around and tries to crack a joke. Not for hours. Coming back cost him something, and whatever it took, his body hasn't figured out how to get it back yet.
Dawn breaks over Nightfall Cove, gold pushing through the last of the dark.
Peter sits zip-tied to a chair in the middle of the great room, his face swollen, his breathing ragged. The two Humans First men who came with him are bound beside him.
Knox crouches in front of Peter. He doesn't touch him.
