“It’s always like that with you,” George said. “You’ve been after Curran for years to find a mate, and when he found one, you didn’t approve of her, so you decided that none of the things you were supposed to do as his father applied. You’ve been asking me for years when I planned to settle down, and when I did, you didn’t like him either. Now he’s disappeared and it’s your responsibility as an alpha to look for him, but you don’t like it, so you chose not to do it. All your talk of duty and obligations means nothing. You think you know better than any of us. You don’t. Look at what you’re doing, Dad. You’re challenging the Beast Lord you swore allegiance to because you don’t like the man your daughter loves. Because it hurt some weird little place in your pride. This is how you serve and lead your clan. Don’t you have any integrity at all?”

A burning rock the size of a basketball streaked across the sky and landed in the street in front of our house. I lunged in front of Andrea, trying to shield her. The explosion shook the ground.

“What are you doing?” Andrea hauled me back. “I’m a shapeshifter. I regenerate!”

“You’re pregnant.”

“Oh, shut up.”

A brilliant golden flame ten feet high and five feet wide ignited in the middle of the street. Inside it, Eduardo writhed in his cage. The ifrit was punishing Eduardo because we’d killed the bull.

A voice rolled through the street, a voice charged with inhuman power that prickled against my skin like static. It raised every hair on the back of my arms. “All who are guilty will die. Witness the betrayer spawn. See his suffering.”

George ran. I jumped to my feet and chased her. Jim made a grab for her, but he wasn’t fast enough. George dashed into the street, right into the fire. It broke apart into a thousand sparks and transformed into a thirty-foot-long, glowing snake.

George screamed at the top of her lungs. It was a scream of rage and pain, rolled into one horrible, soul-crushing sound. She screamed as if something inside her had torn and nothing could put it back together.

The snake lunged at her. George grabbed it by its neck, heaved it upright, and slammed the body against the pavement. The snake hissed, the massive coils trying to wind around George and crush her. The werebear planted one foot on the snake. The muscles on her arm flexed and she tore the reptile in two. The light went out of the snake’s eyes, but George didn’t stop. She mauled and ripped the creature again and again, venting her grief on its body.