I know I shouldn’t care about giving the ringleader away. I know I shouldn’t want to protect the boys who just did this to me. But for some reason a sense of mothering them still fills me inside. I know they didn’t know what they were doing. It doesn’t make it right. But it doesn’t make vengeance right either.

Or does it?

“Who?” Peter demands again, this time louder than before.

I shake in his embrace, my mind still petrified, panicked, from the change in him that I just witnessed. My eyes drift to the floor, and when I still won’t look up, he tries again more tenderly.

“Please Wendy,” he whispers, “Tell me, who did this to you?”

My heart beats faster at this side of him. The tenderness. The need to protect. I can’t help myself and finally look up at Slightly who takes a step back in fear. I feel Peter tense at my side as he takes in where my eyes fell.

He leans into me, placing a kiss on my cheek, then whispers, “Good girl.”

Releasing me, he spins quickly, pulling a sword from his waist and slices off Slightly’s raised hand as he begs Peter to stop. I jump back as a gasp falls from my lips; my mind is telling my body to run but my feet are glued to the floor as I watch this new side of Peter unleash hell once again on the lost boys. He runs his sword through Slightly’s heart a second later and he quickly falls to the floor. My hands raise to my mouth as I muffle a scream before Peter turns on Cubby.

“Him too?” he addresses me, never taking his eyes off the boy who was once his friend.

Cubby’s eyes plead with me over Peter’s shoulder to lie for him. To beg Peter for his life. I feel sick, my mind clouds, I think twice before Peter looks over his shoulder and his eyes meet mine.

“Answer me,” he demands in a way that washes everything I’m witnessing away and has me complying instantly.

Taking a deep breath, I bow my head, unable to look up at the fate that Cubby is about to meet. Against my better judgment, I whisper, “Yes.”

A second later, I hear Cubby take his last breath as Peter’s sword pierces him right through the chest. I look up only to see Peter turn toward me and feel the twins tense at my back. He takes a few steps forward, passing me with a stern look, and then wipes his blade on each one of the twins' chests. One of each side that is covered in blood for each twin.

“Touch her again,” he hisses. “And I’ll kill you.”