Page 19 of Pierce

“You know as well as I do that there’s no way to tell just by looking, and vice versa. I didn’t know she was fae until…” I realized I’d just incriminated myself, but it was too late.

“Until when?” Gate’s whisper was cold, menacing.

I squared my shoulders and looked each of them in the eye as the dragon in me roared in defiance.

Let them try to punish us, he growled, straining for a good fight.

We hadn’t been in a good fight in far too long, and it didn’t matter that we were facing our family. He wanted to draw blood over the girl.

“Until I tried to heal her, just now. When we were alone again.”

It was as if I’d just dropped a bomb. The four of them stared at me, slack-jawed.

Smoke was the first to recover. “Why would you do that?”

I could see how hard he worked to keep himself under control. His dragon wanted justice just like mine wanted blood.

Gate exploded before I had the chance to reply, hurling himself across the room.

Miles barely caught him in time to prevent a brawl.

“Let him come!” I shouted over the chaos.

Smoke reached my side in an instant.

“Calm yourself,” he warned.

I shook off the arm he threw in front of me.

“No! He’s the one who needs to be calm!” I looked across the room to where Miles and Fence had Gate cornered. “What is it with you?”

“With me? You’re the one putting our lives at risk, and you’re asking me what my problem is?”

“Gate, come on,” Smoke called out. “It’s not that serious. Not yet. We have to cool ourselves off if we want to move past this.”

“There is no moving past this!” he exclaimed with a laugh.

“That’s up to you.”

“Come on,” Fence said, glancing my way. “This isn’t the end of the world. Pierce was doing what he thought was right.”

“You’re on his side now?”

“I didn’t know there were sides. I thought we were all in this together.”

“I thought we were, too,” Gate sneered. “Until one of us started making major decisions without asking any of the others what they thought. Bringing outsiders in here after all this time. What have we been working to protect, then, if this is possible? Why have we held ourselves back from the rest of the world all this time if things were always going to come to this in the end?”

For the first time, I heard the desperation in his voice.

It never occurred to me that some of us might’ve taken our solitude better than others. Would I have rather been with others every so often?

Yes, but not enough for it to get under my skin and stay there.

Gate clearly didn’t feel the same.

I nodded to Smoke in reassurance that I wouldn’t start a fight.

He backed away to give me room to move.

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