But Fang knew that was easier said than done.
Leaving them alone to discuss the details, he pulled Aimee out of the room and into the narrow hallway.
"What have we done, Aim?"
Aimee reached up to brush his hair back from his face. She could cry over this night. How she wished she could turn back time and just be with Fang in her room again.
But she couldn't.
"Let me go back and see if I can keep them from pursuing Wren."
"I still say fuck them. Let's leave. . . ."
Her family would hunt them down to the ends of the world.
Aimee touched her lips to his whiskered cheek as she placed her locket in his hand. "I will find a way to be with you, Fang. I swear it."
Fang nodded, even though he didn't believe a word she spoke. It had been hopeless before.
Now . . . this was good-bye forever and he knew it.
Aimee took a deep breath as she entered the back door of Peltier House. This was the last place she wanted to be, but she knew full well why she had to return.
Her family would kill Fang and his entire clan if she didn't.
Steeling herself for what was to come, she closed the door and headed for the stairs. She'd only gotten as far as the hall table when Dev came out of the door that led to the kitchen. She saw relief in his eyes a second before it was replaced with anger.
"So you're back."
Aimee shrugged. "It's my home."
He scoffed at her. "I would find another one, if I were you."
She stiffened at the coldness of his tone that bit her all the way to her soul. "I'm being thrown out?"
"You're being warned. You picked your side and it was the wrong one."
"Leave us."
Aimee looked up at her mother's commanding tone. Maman was at the top of the stairs, glaring down at them. Dev shook his head at her before he headed back toward the kitchen.
She flashed herself up to her mother's side. "Don't even think about striking me, Maman. I'm not in the mood for it. And I will hit back this time."
Her mother narrowed her eyes on her. "You would sacrifice all of us for a hybrid orphan without clan?"
Maman was talking about Wren and while he held Aimee's loyalty as a friend, it was Fang's life that mattered most to her. "Never. But I will not stand by and see an innocent condemned for nothing. Can you not see the lie that is being told, Maman? I know Wren. I talk to him. He's no threat to anyone but himself."
Still her mother's face was angry and cold. Her family, and in particular her mother, wasn't stupid. She had no doubt that her mother and father knew she'd left voluntarily with Fang. Given the way he'd been protecting her these months past, they had to know he would have never really harmed her.
"You betrayed us all."
Aimee sighed. "If doing the right thing is betrayal, then yes, I suppose I did. So what are you going to do now, Maman? Kill me?"
Her mother growled ferociously at her, but Aimee stood her ground.
The air around them sizzled an instant before something shattered in Wren's room.
Aimee followed her mother who rushed to the door and slung it open. She half-expected to find Wren there even though they'd told him to stay away until this was settled. She could tell by the scent that it was a tiger all right, but the blond man searching the room wasn't Wren.