“Then I will deal with it.” He sounded cold like a glacier.

My chest hurt. The world gained a slight red tint. I concentrated on breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s just that she’s so much more fragile than we are. Humans die of disease. They’re weaker and easily hurt. If her children are born human, they would inherit her weakness . . . You shouldn’t have to give up your . . . I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

Exhale. Inhale.

“I appreciate your kindness. It’s about time for us to go back,” Curran said. “I will be missed.”

Exhale.

“Of course.”

A door thumped closed. Hugh shook his head. “I wasn’t sure before, but now I know—the man is an idiot.”

The pain sat in my chest, hot and solid. “Don’t say it.”

“He’s a man of limited vision, Kate. All he cares about is the immediate: she’s telling him that you can’t hunt with him, you don’t grow fur, and he isn’t defending you. Sweet gods, your children might be human. The horror. He hasn’t even considered what it means to have you on his side long-term. You handed him a priceless red diamond and he’s reaching for glass beads because they are bigger and flashier.”

“It’s none of your business.” This was it. This was his angle. Separate me from Curran and present himself as a better alternative. Hugh was playing me. I was walking along the edge of a cliff and needed to be sharp or I’d plunge down, but the red mist in my head was making it hard to concentrate.

“There are dozens of girls like Lorelei. They think they are special because they were born shapeshifters and they are cute and spoiled. They expect the world to bend for them.” Hugh pointed toward the hall. “I can go in there right now, ask for one, and by morning I’ll have ten just like her. You are special, Kate. You were born special, and then you passed through Voron’s crucible, and you’ve excelled. Curran can’t see it. There is an old word for it: unworthy.”

“Will you be quiet?” I ground out.

He kept talking, never raising his voice, his tone reasonable but insistent. “I work with shapeshifters. I know them. I have them in my order. They don’t think like us. They like to pretend they do, but their physiology is simply too different. They don’t experience complex emotions, they experience urges. It’s a cold, hard fact. Shapeshifters are ruled by instincts and needs: the urge to survive, to eat, and to produce offspring. Everything they do is dictated by animalistic thinking: they feel fear and it drives them into forming packs; they’re driven to procreate and so they become aggressive toward their competition in an effort to pass on their genes; they make children—”