Melinda shot him a nervous glance.
“You mean he’ll, uh, go into Rage? Like…like you did?”
Liosh felt his heart fist in his chest. Gods, how he wished she hadn’t seen him in that state! He’d seen the mangled remains of the man he had killed when the Rage had come upon him and he could only imagine what he must have done in order to rip the other male apart so thoroughly.
And Melinda had seen it all. No wonder she was looking askance at him now and hadn’t offered to sit with him or asked to cuddle, as she usually did when they were together.
“He may if she is threatened,” he said carefully. “But he will never hurt Jodi, even if he does go into Rage. He’ll be trying to save her—to protect her, that’s all.”
“Okay,” Melinda whispered and nibbled her thumb nail some more.
Liosh’s heart fisted in his chest at the fear and uncertainty in her eyes.
“Did you think I would hurt you?” he asked softly. “When I went into Rage because I saw you being attacked?”
“No, not…not exactly,” she said, darting another nervous glance at him. “It was just so…gory. So bloody. You’ve always been so gentle with me. I didn’t…didn’t know you could…could do that to somebody.”
“Not just somebody—the male who attacked you, Talli,” he reminded her. “And I’m sorry you had to see it,” he added. “I know it was…awful.” He shook his head. “The Rage came on me so suddenly and I…I’ve never had it happen to me before. I had no notion how to control it—I was running on pure instinct.”
“So you’ve never…never gone into Rage before?” she asked, her blue eyes wide.
Liosh shook his head.
“I’ve never had a reason—never loved a female before like I love you,” he assured her gently.
“Really? Oh, Liosh!”
At last she came to him, letting herself be enfolded in his arms.
“Your response actually makes more sense than mine,” she told him when she was seated on his knee with Liosh’s broad hand splayed comfortably between her shoulder blades.
“What do you mean, Talli?” he asked gently. “What was wrong with your response?”
“Well, I tried to get away at first…” Melinda put a hand to her throat and went silent—went inside herself so that Liosh was afraid she was reliving the attack.
“Yes?” he asked gently, trying to bring her back.
“I…when I couldn’t get away, I just…went limp.” Melli hung her head in shame. “I wanted to fight him…wanted to scream and kick and punch. But it was like my body wouldn’t do anything. And then I didn’t even feel like I was in my body anymore. I felt like I was floating and looking down at myself. I didn’t do anything to try and stop him!”
“Talli, please—don’t be so hard on yourself,” Liosh murmured, rubbing her back. “You can’t control what response your body has to an attack. My guess is that you were so horribly surprised at seeing that bastard again, you went into a kind of shock.”
“Maybe,” Melinda whispered. “But I still should have tried to fight him—I should have tried to do something.”
“Sweetheart, you couldn’t help the way your body reacted to his attack on you any more than I could help the way mine did,” Liosh assured her. He drew her close to his chest and stroked her long blonde hair. “Nothing that happened was your fault—it was all that bastard, Jason Sykes.”
“Not all,” Melli said, surprising him. “I mean, he didn’t come up with the idea to go after me all on his own.”
Rapidly, she told what she’d learned about how Amanda Brannigan had been behind both attacks—both the recent one and the one back in high school.
As he listened, Liosh felt himself growing cold. This was an offense worthy of the same savage death he had meted out to Jason Sykes, but Amanda was a female and so he couldn’t kill her.
“I must think about this,” he said at last, when Melli was finished. “She deserves death for what she did to you but I cannot kill a female—it is against everything that is in me.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean for you to kill her!” Melli’s eyes went wide with horror. “Please, Liosh—don’t do that! Don’t go into Rage again and…and…” But she couldn’t seem to finish.
Liosh felt his heart fist in his chest. She might have been brave enough to come to him, but there was no denying that Melli was always going to be a little different around him now, after seeing the Rage incident. There was a new wariness in her interactions with him that hadn’t been there before. A new fear that she’d never had before she saw him go feral and rip her attacker to shreds with his fangs.
“Forgive me if I frightened you,” he said, his voice hoarse with regret. “I just don’t believe that such a female should go unpunished. Though how her punishment is to be achieved, I confess, I don’t know.”