That voice—the casual impassive tone. That allowed a man to hit me. That ordered me to be thrown over the wall. That told me my childhood village no longer existed. I ball up my hands in useless rage, wishing I could storm down the hall and punch him but knowing he’d only strike me to the ground.

“The men aren’t happy about what you did, Catcher,” Ox says. “Conall was a good friend to many of them, and the second in command.”

“I wasn’t too happy about what they were doing to the woman I love,” Catcher responds evenly.

“I’m not kidding around.” Ox’s voice is menacing, but also exhausted. “You don’t have any idea what it takes to keep so many people alive, do you? Any idea how much it takes to keep order? It takes rules, and to have meaningful rules you have to have consequences for breaking them.”

He leans against the doorframe, wiping a hand over his face. There are dark circles under his eyes. “Regardless of what you might think, I’m not evil, Catcher. But you can’t get away with what you did. And since we can’t punish you directly …” His voice trails off and he sighs. “They wanted to take the women.”

My stomach lurches. A storm of horrible images flashes through my mind and I shove them away, anger building inside me.

“You know you can’t allow that,” Catcher growls. “I won’t allow it.”

Ox throws up his hands in exasperation. “This whole thing’s gone too far. These men want blood.”

I close my eyes, press my hands to my temples. There has to be a way to fix this. To make it stop.

Catcher fires back, “They’re your men, Ox, control them. You’re in charge of them. You shouldn’t have allowed things to get to where they have.”

“Maybe so,” Ox counters. “But that doesn’t change where we are now. Someone has to pay for Conall’s death. They wanted both your women. I convinced them to take only one. You have to hand one of the girls over and I’m not going to stop them. What you did was wrong—”

And before I know what’s happening, Catcher slams his fist into Ox’s face and Ox staggers backward. I race down the hall, throwing myself between them with a hand pressed against each chest to keep them apart.

“Stop it!” I yell.

“What you did was wrong!” Catcher shouts over me. “What I did was justice.”

Ox stares at me a moment, an expression approaching pity in his eyes. He’s different from Conall in that way. Conall loved blood and fear. Ox is just trying to maintain some sort of order on the island—a way to keep his men alive.