the walls with him. It just didn’t scare him anymore.
“I have a name,” he said bluntly as he straightened up off the stool. “So you can call me Danny or he, or you can shut your—”
It was Kath who stepped between them, her back to James as she faced Danny down.
“That’s enough,” she snapped as she took a step closer and gave him a shove. “Maybe I didn’t teach you prudence, Danny, but I know I taught you manners. Apologize.”
Danny snorted.
“Your dog needs to spend a night in a muzzle,” James rasped out. “Lach might have been a poor excuse for a Numitor, but that he got right. Dogs have their place, but it’s not here.”
“Da would disagree,” Jack interrupted. He sounded angry, probably with them both.
“Your da’s dead,” James spat. He laughed when Jack snarled at him. “You expect me to care about your feelings? I served the Old Man well. I was loyal, but he was old. He had decades under his belt. My son didn’t even get five. Until he’s back, Jack, fuck your mourning.” He turned to pin Bron with a hard look. “And fuck you too. You think I care more about what’s growing in your belly than my own lad? Why? It probably won’t even live. Gregor’s other child didn’t.”
“The fuck?” Danny blurted, his voice sharp and oddly clear as shock brought the professor out of him.
At the same time, as though to underline Danny’s shock, Bron backhanded James across the face. Her knuckles split his cheekbone and knocked him back a step. He shook his head, blood splattered on the floor, and he instinctively pulled his fist back.
“No!” his mate cried out, her emotions snapped back into focus. “That won’t help him!”
She grabbed James’s arm and the scruff of his neck to wrestle him back. At the same time, Kath shed her dress and pulled her other skin on as she crossed the room, from woman to massive, thick-furred wolf, and put herself between James and her daughter.
James threw his mate off and swung a kick at Kath. She absorbed it against one heavy shoulder and sank her teeth into his leg. Blood stained his jeans as she bit down into the meat of his calf. James snarled and staggered on one foot as he tried to shake her off, but it didn’t work. She braced her legs against the floor and threw her head from side to side to tear the wound open.
Shocked by the outbreak of violence, Ellie jerked to the side and fell off the stool. She squirmed on the flagstones, onto her back and away from the fight. Jack grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her out of reach before he waded in. She showed her throat to him in submissive gratitude, and James finally ripped his leg out of Kath’s jaws.
His leg was tatters of muscle and meat, his jeans shredded. Blood puddled under his feet as he grabbed Kath by the throat and waist, ignoring the snap of her teeth that tore his arm open, and threw her at the wall. Then he reached for Bron.
Danny cursed under his breath and scrambled to his feet. He dove across the room to the Old Man’s desk and grabbed the shotgun leaning up against the wall next to it. It was old and rarely used—just to scare birds away when they got on the Old Man’s nerves, but enough for him to make a show of himself by chasing them in his fur—but it was clean and well-oiled.
The Old Man always believed it was a virtue to maintain your weapons, even if you didn’t really need them.
Danny pointed it at the puddle of blood around James’s feet and pulled the trigger. The recoil smacked the butt back against his hip, and smoke belched from the muzzle. Buckshot pocked the old granite slabs of the floor and punched a few holes into James’s foot as well. Danny had never had to aim before. The Old Man didn’t want to eat the gulls or the crows, so all he’d sent Danny—or whatever dog was playing assistant that week—out to do was make a loud noise at the sky.
The unexpected noise made everyone flinch, their ears even more sensitive than the birds, and James swung his head around to glare at Danny. His lips peeled back from teeth that looked too cluttered for his mouth, his fangs pushed against his gums as his wolf tried to get out.
“You think that will