He’d slammed her to the ground without meaning to, the force of his mutilated muzzle grinding against her shoulder clumsy and blunt. Kershov had flattened plenty of wolves in the past, male and female both, and never felt a thread of guilt; however, those times had always been on purpose, the power behind the punch calculated and controlled and always for a reason. Sometimes dissenters just needed a little dirt on their faces to remember who was in charge. Occasionally, when words were wasted on deaf ears and foolish minds, the Law of Tooth and Claw worked best. But this was Briseis . . . fragile, quiet, innocent, utterly undeserving of anyone mussing a single mottled hair upon her pelt. She’d endured the Monster’s cold cruelty to lead him to his stolen daughter; she’d entered Uyaraut’s borders without complaint, never once looking at any of its rougher members the wrong way. She was a butterfly: harmless. And Kershov had just swatted her down, insult to injury, treating her like the object his clandestine demon had used her as.

Biting his foreleg was not penitence enough. But the sort of retribution Kershov deserved was not something he could visit upon himself alone.

He watched her press pawprints into the sand impassively. Agony battered his heart like the gavel of a judge after the first marking . . . and then she’d continued the tally, her entire body jerking with each shattered breath, until the edges of Kershov’s vision turned crimson and air knifed sharply past his diaphragm. Rage. More frigid than the heart of an ice burg. Deadly as a mid-winter blizzard, killing everything with its wicked frozen jaws. His pounding pulse sliced through every artery and vein, his blood crystalized by glacial ire and splintering around each corner. The phantom could not hear the muted growling of his Beast—that stormy snowy howling in his brain drowned it out completely. He could not rip the devil from its home inside his chest and put it on trial for its heinous crimes . . . and nevertheless, those sins could not remain unpunished. His body had brutalized Briseis this way. And so Kershov, in command of that body after a long unknowing night, would be punished in the devil’s place.

When Briseis managed to pick herself off the ground, bits of grit and sand sparkling lightly on the tips of her mussed hairs, the alabaster gangster met her with a mask utterly devoid of expression. Twin pitch-glass lanterns reflected nothing back toward her but the faint glitter of starlight, and the shadowy duplication of her face. He allowed her to say her piece . . . to horrify him with the reality of her life thus far, as if that somehow alleviated Kershov’s repulsive crime rather than making it worse. Once she’d finished, wiping at wet lilac eyes, Kershov spoke again—timbre hard as cut diamond in its fierce finality. “Never again, Briseis. Not by me. Not by anyone.” A serrated growl stabbed through the last of his syllables. The pallid Alpha immediately bit the furious, boiling noise back, audibly swallowing to control himself, and immediately started off in the direction of the sea. Briseis wanted to feel clean? Kershov would skin himself alive and let her wear his pelt instead, if his flesh weren’t caked in filth beyond redemption.

The pair traveled silently under the endless indigo sky, the only sound the distant and comforting roar of the ocean. The colossal dragga led the salt-and-pepper fae down a sloping path that led to a series of shallow tide pools; here Bri could step into the lukewarm water without fear of night-hunting predators or treacherous riptides . . . or the prying eyes of curious pack wolves. “Wade into the pool. You’ll be able to soak your fur.” The universe must have a sick sense of humor, for Briseis to ask her rapist to help her clean up. Kershov very carefully did not touch the girl; he stood well clear of her while he waited for her to clamber down the smooth stone that enclosed each tide pool in a protective bowl, lyrics dead and monotone, eyes dead and distant. “I will stand behind that rock to give you privacy. If you need me for any reason, just say so. I will be able to hear you.” A small dip of his head. Obsidian gaze averted, haunted. His limbs carried him robotically toward a rock standing among other boulders near the surf, where he leaned in case his waning strength suddenly left him. A plan. I need a plan. What . . . have I done . . . ?

If Briseis called for the Emperor’s cooperation, he would go to her without hesitation or comment. He would clean the grime from her fur to make up for the trauma he could not wipe away, and be her crutch if she could not walk back out onto the sand on her own. Until the moment he’d left her at her den and ensured that she’d fallen asleep, Kershov would not leave her side.