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“And you , Carmen,” Rowan adds to his soon-to-be-wife. “ You can howl with the best of ’em.”

A round of scandalized laughter breaks over the table. Carmen rolls her eyes and shakes her head, blushing despite her best efforts.

“How about you, Elena?” the groomsman presses, waggling his eyebrows. “Are you a screamer?”

The water goblet in my hand shatters, and I hiss as a piece of glass embeds itself in my palm. Water and blood drench the pristine white tablecloth, but Elena seems to be the only one who notices.

“Stop being a perv, Rhett,” Carmen interjects. “Rafael gave me strict instructions to protect Elena from all of you .”

Not true, but I like Carmen a little more for telling her fiancé’s friends to back the fuck off.

My hands are shaking with barely contained fury, but I can feel Elena watching me out of the corner of her eye. She’s waiting to see if I’m going to lose my shit, so I busy myself with picking glass out of my hand so I don’t leap across the table and strangle that asshole.

“She doesn’t mind, do you, Elena?” another groomsman teases. “We don’t bite.” He leans forward and lowers his voice to a suggestive whisper. “Not unless you ask us to.”

The wolves break into another round of bawdy laughter, and I grip my fork so hard that the metal starts to bend.

Blood is pounding in my temples, but I resist the urge to flip over the table and beat the ever-living daylights out of the whole pack of them.

My jumping in to defend Elena’s honor would only embarrass her further.

She’s the only one who seems to notice me bending my fork out of shape. I catch her staring out of the corner of my eye.

“Take it from someone who knows,” Derek breaks in, not looking at Elena as he cuts his meat with savagery. “Elena won’t be asking any of you to do anything. No matter how long you date her.”

There’s a scandalized round of “whoas” from the groomsmen, and something inside me snaps.

“That sounds like a you problem, not an Elena problem,” I growl, my voice just loud enough for the shifters sitting nearby to hear.

“ What did you say to me?” Derek snaps.

I take a deep breath and concentrate on cutting my prime rib into tiny little pieces so I don’t turn the knife on him.

In this moment, I’m grateful for my martial-arts training. Coach always says that emotions have no place in a fight, and I’ve had to learn to shut them down on command.

“I think you heard me just fine.”

Derek’s nostrils flare, and the bitter scent of rage fills my airways.

He throws his napkin down on the table and lowers his voice to a furious whisper that nevertheless reaches all the shifters’ ears.

“It figures that Elena would enjoy slumming with you. You can take the girl out of La Alma, but you can’t take La Alma out of the girl. ”

“ Dude ,” says Carmen’s fiancé at the same moment I burst to my feet. I don’t have time to think about what I’m doing. I just drive the tip of my steak knife straight through Derek’s right hand.

A roar of pain makes my ears ring, and my skin itches with the urge to shift. My vision has already begun to change, and I know my eyes have lightened to a wolfish arctic blue.

There’s an uproar from the other groomsmen, but I’m distracted by the swish of fabric. Elena turns and flees the table, and I feel her sudden loss of warmth.

The rest of the groomsmen are on their feet. I know they’re waiting to see if Derek’s all right before they shift and tear me to pieces.

“We’ll finish this later,” I growl at Elena’s ex, whose eyes have lightened to a shimmering amber. I can see his facial bones beginning to change and black hair sprouting along his temples.

So dramatic . I purposely aimed for a spot where I wouldn’t sever any tendons or go through bone, and Derek is a shifter with superhuman healing. His right hand will be stiff but usable by morning. At least the injury will keep him from rubbing one out thinking of Elena tonight.

I’ve never been one to walk away from a fight, but the fight that matters isn’t the kind I can win with teeth and claws. The woman I’m fighting for just walked out of the room.

Not caring how it will look to the other shifters, I stride out after Elena. She isn’t in the alcove outside the ballroom, but I pick up the trail of vanilla and coconut and follow it down the hallway .

It ends abruptly at a set of French doors leading out onto the terrace. Swallowing down my nerves as I formulate an apology, I open the door and slip outside.

It’s completely dark aside from the moon, but my wolf vision is good enough that I can see her clearly. Elena is bent over the decorative stone wall, hands braced on the top. Her breaths sound uneven and ragged, and I taste the same panic on the back of my tongue.

“Elena?”

“Go away.”

The words feel like a punch to the gut.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I say, dragging a hand through my hair. “I wasn’t trying to start anything, but I couldn’t just sit there and let that jackass talk about you like that.”

“It’s fine,” she wheezes, shaking her head. “Just go, okay? I’ll be up in a minute.”

I hesitate. It’s fine ?

I can tell from her tone that it’s definitely not fine, but Elena isn’t the passive-aggressive type. I know she’s still pissed, but she’s not tearing me a new one, which means something else must be wrong.

“What’s with you?”

“Nothing! Just leave .” Elena’s words come out as a growl, but I can tell she’s crying.

“No,” I say as gently as I can. I grip her shoulders and spin her around. “Elena, talk to m?—”

The words die on my tongue. Elena’s big brown eyes are swimming with tears, and she looks like a cornered animal.

“What’s wrong?” I ask as terror overwhelms me. I’ve never seen her like this .

Elena’s bottom lip quivers. Then she bursts into tears. I just stand there like an idiot as she launches herself at me and buries her face in my chest.

“It’s these stupid — panic attacks,” she chokes, fisting my lapels as her body heaves with sobs. “Ever since — the accident. Sometimes I g-get — and I c-can’t control it.”

“Shh,” I whisper, wrapping an arm around her quaking shoulders as understanding hits me.

Raf has been unusually tight-lipped about Elena’s limitations since the accident.

I knew she still had some issues with her balance, which basically destroyed any chance she had of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

He also told me she didn’t drink alcohol, that she had trouble finding the right words when she was overtired, and that she sometimes got really bad migraines.

He didn’t tell me she was having panic attacks, though, and my heart aches for her.

I don’t have any idea how to help her, so I just pull her against my chest and rub soothing circles over her back. I alternate between making soft shushing sounds and planting light kisses along the top of her head.

Comforting words spew from my lips like a song I’d forgotten I knew the lyrics to. I don’t know half the things I’m even saying, but they must be working, because Elena’s sobs die down.

I continue to rub her back until a shudder rolls through her and she pulls away. The terror I scented is gone now, replaced by a burning shame.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, scrubbing under her eyes and trying very hard not to look at me.

“For what? ”

A humorless smile stretches her lips. Elena could never look ugly to me, but that’s the only word I can think to describe that self-deprecating smile.

“For being such a mess.” She lifts her eyebrows.

“I never thought I’d be that girl who runs out of a rehearsal dinner to cry, but that’s just one of the lovely things I get to deal with now. ”

Since the accident.

She shudders. “I’m a wreck. No matter what I do, my stupid brain has a mind of its own.”

“Stop it,” I growl, irrationally angry at this version of Elena that’s so damn hard on herself. “You are not a wreck. You could never be a wreck. Not to me.”

Her head trembles in half a shake, but I grab her chin and turn her to face me. “ Look at me.”

I can feel Elena resisting my command, but the dominant pull in my voice is hard to ignore.

When she finally meets my gaze, the vulnerability in her eyes steals my breath away. I soften my voice and loosen my grip. “Why didn’t you tell me about the panic attacks?”

“When?” she asks.

Her implication is clear. When in the two years since the accident would she have told me? It wasn’t as though we spoke.

“Fair enough,” I say with a hard swallow. “But why didn’t Raf tell me?”

“Raf doesn’t know everything about me,” Elena murmurs. “No matter how much he likes to think he does.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“I haven’t told anyone.”

All the air rushes out of my lungs. Elena’s been carrying this burden alone ?

I shake my head. “Why not?”

“Would you ?”

I open my mouth, but no words come out. I don’t like to lie — especially not to Elena — and the truth is that I would probably want to keep something like this to myself.

“Exactly,” she says, correctly interpreting my non-answer. “It’s bad enough being the alpha’s human sister. Breakable. Weak. Damaged .” Her voice breaks on the last word, but she purses her lips and doesn’t cry. “The last thing I want is to give people another reason to look down on me.”

“You are not damaged,” I say, my voice coming out in a fierce growl. “You’re not weak, either.”

Elena scoffs and tries to look away, but I keep hold of her chin and force her to meet my gaze.

“To go through what you did and refuse to give up on your dream?” I shake my head. “You are one of the strongest people I know.”

Her lower lip wobbles, and in this moment, I want nothing more than to cover her mouth with my own. I want to kiss her — bury her pain with the force of my love — but I know it’s not the time.

“I should get back in there,” she says, scrubbing her cheeks and fixing her hair so the curls cover up the spot where she still bears the scar from her surgery. “It’s still Carmen’s rehearsal dinner. I don’t want to bail.”

“Fuck the dinner. You don’t owe those assholes anything. Plus, I don’t think there’s going to be much of a party since I put my steak knife through Derek’s hand .

A sudden laugh bursts out of Elena, but it turns into a hiccuping sob. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“He deserved it.”

Her bottom lip quivers, and I see on her face that the last thing she wants to do is face those wolves again.

“You’re not going back to the dinner,” I announce. “I’m taking you up to bed.”