out beneath a roar of fury.
I hurl myself at the other man, the roar bursting from my throat. My fist slams into the side of his head before he’s had a chance to turn fully around.
Kellan staggers backward, catches himself, and springs at me with a snarl. I land a punch on his jaw, but he manages to knee me in the gut. I dodge another blow and leap at him again, conscious of nothing but the thunder of my pulse and the rageful red tinting the edges of my vision.
He attacked her, that poor slip of a thing not even half his weight with no means of defending herself, and he is going to pay.
My teeth twinge as they lengthen into fangs; my shoulders start to hunch with the instinct to unleash my wolf. I can fight in either form, but the animal is faster, freer. Kellan slashes at my face with fingertips already sprouting claws—
—and a force larger than either of us rams between us, shoving us apart.
Sylas plants himself there with his arms spread, one hand gripping my shoulder and the other Kellan’s. The growl I was about to let out dies in my throat under my lord’s scrutiny.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he barks, and jerks his head around to level his glare at Kellan too. “Both of you. Are you my cadre, or are you whelps barely off their mother’s teat?”
My muscles are still clenched with anger, but the flare of adrenaline is already tapering off. A sickly sense of shame trickles through me. And I was just bemoaning that he doesn’t invite me into his higher strategy discussions. Small wonder.
“He hurt Talia,” I say, because if I’m going to be shamed, Kellan is owed at least as much. “Kicked her crutch away so she’d fall. I was—”
“Defending her?” Sylas fills in with a dark rumble in his voice. He tips his head toward the stairs. “It doesn’t appear she’s appreciated your attempt all that much.”
I glance past him, and my heart plummets. Talia has scrambled over to the foot of the steps. She’s crouched there, a pose not so different from when we found her in Aerik’s cage a week ago, her expression as terrified as it looked then. She holds her crutch braced in front of her like a shield. She’s trembling, her breath coming in shallow gulps.
The shame that gripped me before is nothing compared to what rolls over me at that sight. We rescued her from fae who acted like monsters toward her, I’ve been doing everything I know how to help her heal—and what could she see me as after that display of violence but a monster just like them, ready to snap the second he’s angered?
I would never lash out at you like that, I want to tell her. You have nothing to fear from me. But why in the lands should she believe me?
“Talia,” Sylas says gently, “you’re in no danger. The fighting is over. I’ll deal with these two. No one will hurt you.”
Her hands squeeze tighter around the crutch, but she nods in acknowledgment, her breath catching and then starting to even out.
Sylas’s tone softens even more. “Do you need me to help you upstairs? I think you’d best retire to your room for the night.”
She holds still for a few more seconds, getting her trembling under control, and then pushes herself upright with a shaky determination that makes my heart ache twice as much as before. “I—I think I’ll be all right,” she whispers.
“I’m glad to hear it. I’ll see that you’re not disturbed.”
She bobs her head again and limps away up the steps, her crutch wavering in her anxious grasp. I feel every fall of her feet like an additional jab of guilt.
When she’s out of view, our lord lowers his arms and turns back to Kellan. His voice comes out taut with the anger he knows how to control. “I told you to leave her be.”
“She wasn’t hurt,” the other man says dismissively. “I was merely reminding her not to get too cozy around here, since this whelp seems to be doing everything he can to spoil her.”
Sylas’s voice drops even lower. “Just this once, because surely the kin-of-my-mate would never ignore a direct command, I’ll assume you forgot that I specifically said we want her to be comfortable so that she’ll cooperate in every way we need. To make sure the message sticks this time, I’d have you attend to her in