Her lips part on a breath.
Color drops out of her face in one slow drain, and I know exactly what she’s seeing without asking because the gold has burned through whatever amber she was used to.
She’s looking my wolf in the eyes.
My throat won’t sound a human word right now. The human in me is hanging on by a tendon. Only the warmth at my back stands between Vanessa’s body and a corpse.
Miranda’s eyes hold mine. She doesn’t flinch, but her body is frozen in place.
I drag in a breath and force my hands to relax until the claws slide back under my nail beds. “Are you hurt?”
My voice comes out as gravel.
She wets her lips, and her chin lifts a quarter inch. “I’m okay.”
“What about Ethan?”
“He’s not hurt.”
I close my eyes for one second.
Behind me, Vanessa is getting up.
I turn back to her, slowly, deliberately, putting my body between her and the bench.
She’s on her feet now. Her lip is split where she bit it on impact, and blood is running down her chin in a thin line she doesn’t bother to wipe.
“You hit me,” she hisses.
“You attacked my fiancée,” I snarl at her.
Her eyes narrow. “You dare to hit me over that pathetic human whore?”
“Watch your fucking mouth.”
The words come out quiet, and they cut harder than a shout.
The team rounds the corner at a run. Samuel reaches us first, then Brody, then three more behind them. Coach trails somewhere in the back. They fan into a loose half-circle, none of them stepping past me without an order.
Vanessa isn’t stupid. She steadies her shoulders anyway.
“That is my son.” Her voice climbs, pitched for the witnesses now. “I will not allow a human to raise him.”
A laugh barks out of me with no humor in it.
“You’d rather he be neglected? You’d rather he be left alone in a house for three days while you fuck your way through a hotel? He nearly starved, Vanessa. You didn’t care, remember?”
“He was fine.”
“He was six months old.”
She lifts her chin. “He’s fine now.”
“He’s fine no thanks to you.”
I take a step forward, and Samuel’s hand lands on my shoulder, the touch of a man saying not yet. The grip stops me, but only just.
“Miranda being human is not an issue. You took this to a human court,” I say, my voice colder. “So I will deal with you through them.”
