“I’m done doing things your way. Your way means we don’t talk for months. You’re coming home with me.”

“You hurt me, on purpose, but everything is cool now, because you didn’t sleep with Rebecca and we can go home.”

“Yes!”

“It doesn’t work this way. I’m not going home with you. You and I are done.”

“You’re mine,” he snarled.

What the hell. Maybe the fight had knocked some screw loose in his brain.

“You’ll always be mine.” He stepped on the carcass and started toward me. I looked into his eyes and saw bouda insanity glaring back. The fighting had tipped the balance between rational thought and crazy passion. Raphael’s emergency brake was malfunctioning and he and I were on a collision course. “You know it and I know it. We love each other.”

“We’re bad for each other.”

“You’re not leaving me again!” he growled.

The adrenaline still coursing through me surged up. He was challenging me! I marched toward him, put my muzzle as close to his as I could, and said slowly, clearly pronouncing every word, “I am leaving you. You don’t get to play with me. I’m not your pet and you don’t get to hurt me because you think I should be punished.”

Baiting him was stupid. I knew that, but I couldn’t help myself. The crazy cocktail of biochemicals and magic that got me through this fight drove me on. I knew I should stop, but it was as if there were two of me—the rational Andrea and the emotion-crazy beastkin—and right now the rational Andrea was being dragged off by a raging river of hormones, while the beastkin Andrea waved good-bye from a cliff nearby.

I bit off words. “You broke my heart and now I’m walking away from you. Watch me.”

He’d hurt me. He would pay.

“This is me walking away.” I turned and took a couple of steps. “Are you watching?”

He lunged at me, and we went down, rolling in the dirt, arm over leg. My back hit the floor and Raphael pinned me in a classic schoolyard bully mount, sitting on my stomach. One of the worst positions you can be trapped in. Great.

“Not walking away now,” he said.

I bent my knees, planted my heels in the ground, and bridged under him. He pitched forward, his right hand coming down on the ground. Got you. I dropped my hips, caught his right arm, pulling it snug against my chest, stepped my right foot over his, capturing him, and bridged sharply to the right. Raphael pitched over and I rolled up on top of him. He clamped my shoulders with his hands.

“I’m getting up and walking out of here. You’ll have to fight me to stop me. Your call.”

Raphael opened his arms. He was letting me go. I had known he would.