I may not be able to challenge the shithead, but I could punch his lights out at least.
I watched them out of the corner of my eye as I maintained most of my attention on the kitchen where my father’s body had crashed through our island. The attack surprised him, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep him down for long.
Right on cue, my father sat up among the rubble. His fingers curled around his jaw, flexing it a couple times as if to right it so it could heal properly. His bottom lip had split where my knuckles had caught him. As a bead of blood began its downward trail, he swiped at it with his thumb and glanced at it. He chuckled at the sight of the blood.
“Well, well, well, that was the boldest thing you have ever done,mija. Color me impressed.” My father rose to his full height then, the cut in his lip sealed fully by the time he did. “Only took you, what? About twenty, twenty-one years to accomplish that, yeah?”
“It’s youronlydaughter’sthirtiethbirthday, you fucking asshat!” Byrd shouted at him, trembling with fury. It was hard to smother the love I had for her in that moment, my lips flirting with becoming a smirk.
My father’s gaze darted to Byrd, looking her up and down with as much accusation as dismissiveness. I could feel Byrd’s skin crawl under the weight of his condescension, but she didn’t shrink away. Her dragon bristled so violently, quickly, and fiercely across our bond that I was surprised her scales didn’t surface and cascade down her skin. He returned his eyes to me, pointing at my girl. “¿Quién chingados es esta chava?”Who the fuck is this girl?
“That is Byrd Pierce?—”
“¿Y quién chingados es esa?”And, who the fuck is that?I translated in annoyance, grinding my teeth at how he spoke SpanishaboutByrd in front of her without translating it.
“She’s myfiancée, Father.”
“Fiancée?” He narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t approve you to be married to anyone. Especially a non-huntress shifter.”
“I mean this with the utmost disrespect, but you don’t have to approve offuckingshitthat I do, Father. I don’t need a single damn thing from you. I never fucking have. I can doanythingI want to do with or without your permission.”
“Clearly, I have been gone too long.” He shook his head, sneering as he looked around the room at the others. “Anything and everything has been allowed here. You all can just fuck any piece of tail you want, huh? Have you lost all your dignity and self-respect?”
“No, but we have lost the bigotry, at least,” Cody muttered under his breath.
Father stalked threateningly toward him with the assuredness of a predator. “I see no one has fixed that mouth of yours?—”
Aunt CK wailed from Aunt Tess’s arms. “Diego, no?—!”
Still, towering over Cody, my father continued, “You have already lost your husband and one son to these monsters, yet you are so quick to want to lose another?—”
“Diego Garcia, howdareyou?—”
My father spun on Mama with narrowed eyes. “Andyou! You were supposed to be the Huntscommander, and this all happened on your watch?—”
“Hey!” I shouted, my chest burning hot with wrath. “I’msupposed to be the Huntscommander. Cooper’s death and everything else happened onmywatch, not Mama’s! If you have any questions, you should be talking tome, not her. This is between us.”
My father shook his head, turning his full attention to me. “Has olvidado tu lugar, pequeña señorita.”You have forgotten your place, little girl.
“No,youhave, Father,” I spat back at him. “You’ve grown too fat on power. You’ve been unopposed for much too long. You are not immortal. You are not invincible. You are not a hero. You aren’t even a real hunter. You don’t give a fuck about the code.”
“You have some nerve?—”
My mouth was already going, every word cracking out of me like a whip. “Have you been keeping trophies, Father? Proof of your conquests and victories, maybe?”
For a fraction of a second, something flickered across his face like a shadow. His nostrils flared. There was an almost-imperceptible flick in his jaw. Before I could consider it deeply, it vanished as his jaw set with an infuriating stillness. He replaced his usual perfectly composed mask of calm anger. “I don’t know what you are talking about?—”
“Your office in Montana.” The images forever seared into my mind flared once more against my will: the glint of scales preserved with an unnatural sheen, the stillness of eyes that should have been moving, and parts that should have been attached and alive. I stifled the shiver that wanted to descend my body, instead using that energy to fuel the flames building in my chest. “You killed dragons, and you hired blood witch-fairies toturn dead dragon-shifters into things to mount on your wall. You treatedpeoplelike they werenovelties.”
My father jerked his chin toward Byrd with something between disdain and mockery without ever glancing at her, as though she were an object. “Did thatgirlsay that to you? You letting someputamake you forget who and what you are?”
Scarlet lit up the edges of my vision again. I roared, my voice booming throughout the house. “You had better keep Byrd and any reference to her out of your motherfucking mouth, Father, or I will make you fucking taste my daggers on that tongue. I’m taking the word of myeyes. Those werepeople, Father!”
“They are animals, Quinn. All monsters are animals. We kill monsters. That is our job. The Council would agree with me.”
“We have acode, Father?—”
“Since when do you care about the code? Hell, since when do you care about any of this? You hate being a huntress. Why do you care so much now?”
