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“How did you reply to Brashe’s questions?”

He stirred his stew with his spoon. “I told him to leave you alone.”

My butter knife clattered against the plate. “You did what?”

His face scrunched, and he sniffed. “I saw what happened at the picnic. He was an ass. I was highly tempted to lay him out flat during our next practice.”

“Jeez, Crim.”

“Yeah, that would be funny now, right? You’d have to rehab him from any injury I might give him.” He smirked. “I’ve also been tempted to trip him more than once.”

“Don’t do that either.”

“The coach wouldn’t like it.”

“And that’s the only reason you haven’t?”

His feral grin returned. “I’d take a lot of satisfaction from doing it, but I doubt he’d understand. I did tell him if he ever pulled something like that again, we’d have a problem.”

My lips had gone numb, and I could feel my rising fury blazing in my face. “I can’t believe you talked to him about me.” My sentence ended on a screech.

“El—”

“No El about it. You talked to him as if I was a problem you needed to manage.”

“I was protecting you.”

“From making my own choices?” My voice climbed even higher in pitch. “Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Like I’m some helpless little human who can’t handle her own life.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“But that’s what you did. You went behind my back and told one of your teammates to stay away from me like I’m your property.” The wine glass trembled in my hand. I set it down before I threw it. “I’m not fourteen anymore, Crim. I don’t need you fighting my battles.”

His jaw worked. For a long moment, he just stared at his stew.

“You’re right,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“Yeah. You were.”

He looked up, his expression raw. “I saw the way you looked when you walked away from him, and I wanted to break him for that. I still do.”

The fight drained out of me. How could I remain angry when I understood? He’d been protecting the fourteen-year-old girl who’d lost everything. The problem was, I wasn’t her anymore.

“I can protect myself. Very well, in fact.”

“Not as well as an orc can.”

“I’ll concede that you’re bigger than me.” I brandished my fist in the air. “But you taught me how to use this.”

“That I did, but you know how orcs are.”

Too well. “Males think they need to protect females from themselves, you mean. I’ll remind you that women are not the weaker sex.”

“I’d never say you were.”

“Good,” I snapped.

“Good,” he growled right back.