Every ounce of air vanished from my lungs.
No.
Hersh went completely still.
The kind of stillness right before violence exploded.
Because Shepherd had just admitted something horrifying.
He hadn’t only watched me once.
He’d watched me enough to know my habits.
71
BLAZE
Something inside me snapped.
Cleanly.
Violently.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just—
gone.
Every survival instinct.
Every rule.
Every piece of restraint I’d spent years building.
“Shepherd,” I said quietly.
Wolf immediately muttered behind me, “Oh hell.”
Because he heard it too.
That tone.
The one that meant I was seconds away from killing somebody.
Rain poured off the porch roof in heavy sheets.
Shepherd kept walking slowly toward the house like he didn’t have a rifle pointed directly at his chest.
Like he wanted this.
Maybe he did.
“You should’ve stayed buried in that canyon,” he called calmly.
I stepped off the porch.
