I heard a tiny high-pitched sound, wailing at my side, and I realized it was the little boy bawling in hysterical fear. His sister sobbed.

“You are better than this, Andi. Do the right thing. Walk away.”

As I forced my fingers open, all the pain of my memories and all my frustration tore out of me in a sharp short scream. I spun and walked away, to the other wall, as far away from her as I could.

“She’s beastkin,” Michelle breathed out. “She’s—”

“She’s the clan beta and my mate,” Raphael said.

Michelle staggered back as if he had hit her.

Raphael’s eyes were two burning pools of blood-red fire. “Your application to the clan is denied. Gather your family and leave. If you’re in my territory by sundown, I’ll hunt you down and drag you before the clans to be tried for torture, abuse of a child, and whatever other charges our lawyers will level against you. You will be found guilty, you will suffer, and you will be executed. Your children will become the wards of the Pack and they’ll loathe your name by the time they grow up.”

Michelle picked up the prone body of her husband. Her daughter grabbed the boy and they ran out.

Raphael walked to me and wrapped his arms around me.

My anger broke out in tortured sobs. Tears wet my eyes. “I had her.”

“I know.”

“In my hands.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, I’m proud of you. It was the right thing.”

“No!” I couldn’t stop crying. I wasn’t sad, I just couldn’t contain it. “She should be dead. That would be the right thing.”

“For her, but not for you. It would eat you alive. It’s not who you are.”

I crumpled down on the ground and cried. I’d learned not to cry back then, because the more I cried, the more excited they would get, but I could cry now. Nobody would stop me, and so I sat there and let it all pour out, while Raphael held me and whispered calm, loving nonsense into my ears.

I could not kill Michelle. I couldn’t scar her children the way she had scarred me. But I could join the Pack and make sure that no other little girl had to face my choices. No other little bouda would be hiding, scared and alone, dreading to be found and abused again. Not on my watch. Not as long as I breathed.

Gradually my sobs died down. We sat together, Raphael and I.

“For the record, I had him,” Raphael said. I could tell by his voice he was baiting me. There was comfort in the familiar needling, and right now I desperately needed it.

“Didn’t look that way from where I stood. He had you all wrapped up.”

“That’s what you think,” he said.

“That is what I think.”