Wrath released his hold, but he didn’t have a chance to jump free. Whoever was pulling at his shoulders took over, tearing his heavy weight off the female fighter.

As he landed on the mat on his back, the retching and heaving breaths of his opponent mixed with the curses of whoever else was with them—as well as a soft whimpering.

“What the fuck are you thinking!” Now someone else was in his face. “You nearly killed her!”

Putting his hands up to his head, a cold sweat bloomed over every square inch of him. “I didn’t know…” he heard himself say. “I had no idea—”

“Did you think she could breathe like that!” It was Doc Jane. Of course—she was down in the clinic and must have heard the barking or …

And iAm was with them. He could sense the Shadow even though the guy was as usual not saying much.

“I’m sorry—Payne … I’m sorry.”

Dear God, what had he done?

He abhorred violence against females. The problem was, when he was sparring with Payne, he didn’t think of V’s sister as one. She was an opponent, nothing more, nothing less—and he’d had the bruises and even a broken bone or two to show that when it came to her, no quarter was asked for nor given.

“Shit. Payne…” He reached out into the empty air, smelling the remnants of her fear as well as the scent that came with impending death. “Payne—”

“It’s okay,” the female said hoarsely. “Honest.”

Doc Jane muttered a number of foul things.

“This is between me and him,” Payne ordered her sister-in-law. “This is not your—”

As a round of coughing cut her off, Jane snapped, “When he nearly strangles you, it sure as hell is my problem!”

“He was going to let me go—”

“Is that why you were turning blue?”

“I was not—”

“His arm is bleeding onto the mat. You telling me your fingernails didn’t do that?”

Payne caught her breath. “It’s fighting, not Go Fish!”

Doc Jane lowered her voice. “Does your brother know exactly how far this is going?”

As Wrath added his own cursing to the fruit salad of F-words, Payne growled, “You are not to tell Vishous about this—”

“Give me a good goddamn reason why and maybe I’ll consider it. Otherwise, no one tells me what I can and cannot say to my own goddamn husband. Not you, not him—”

Wrath was sure she was shooting a glare his way.

“—and certainly never concerning a fucking safety issue about a member of his family!”

The silence that followed was marked by rising aggression. And then Payne barked, “How many bones have you set on the King? How many stitches? Last week you thought I’d dislocated his shoulder—and at no point did you feel the need to run to his shellan and report it. Did you. Did you?”

“This is different.”

“Because I’m female? Excuse me—maybe you’d like to meet my eyes when you use that double standard, Doc?”

Christ, it was as if his mood had infected both of them. Then again, his actions had started all this. Fuck …

Rubbing his face, he listened to them go back and forth. “She’s right.”

That shut them both up.

“I wasn’t going to stop.” He got to his feet. “So I will tell V and we are never doing this again—”

“Don’t you dare,” the fighter spat before falling into another series of coughs. As soon as she recovered, she went back to being in his face. “Don’t you fucking dare disrespect me—I come here to fight with you to keep my own skills up. If you took advantage of a weakness, that is my fault, not yours.”

“So you think I was just being hard on you?” he asked grimly.

“Of course. And I hadn’t tapped out yet—”

“Do you think for a second that would have gotten through to me.”

A fissure of fear charged the molecules around the female.

“And that is why we will never do this again.” He turned in the direction of Doc Jane. “But she’s also right. This is not your business, so stay out of it.”

“The hell I—”

“Not a request, Jane. An order. And I’ll go see V as soon as I’m out of the shower.”

“You can be a real prick, you know that, Your Highness.”

“And a murderer. Don’t forget that one.”

He started off in the direction of the door, not bothering to take George’s halter handle. When his trajectory got off, the dog course-corrected him by getting in the way and steering him to the proper exit.

“Locker room,” he grunted when they entered the concrete corridor.

George, familiar with either the word or the postworkout ritual, helped him navigate down the hall, his paws clipping along across the bald floor.

Thank God the training center was a ghost town this time of day. The last thing he wanted was to run into anybody.

With the Brothers sleeping, the extensive underground complex was empty, from the gym and its equipment rooms, to the gun range and classrooms, to the Olympic-size swimming pool and the office that ran everything—as well as Doc Jane and Manny’s operating rooms and recovery suites.

Although Payne had almost been a patient.

Shit.

Running his hand down the wall, he stopped when he got to an inset doorway. “You wanna wait here?” he asked George.

Going by the jangling of the collar and the bony tha-bump, the golden decided to sit out shower time which was fairly typical—not a big fan of hot and humid because of that long coat of his.

Pushing his way in, Wrath was able to orient well. Thanks to the closed-in acoustics and all the tile, things were easy to navigate by sound—and habit. Also, spaces that he’d spent a lot of time in back when he’d had some of his sight were so much easier to handle on his own.

Fuck. If that dog hadn’t stopped him just now?

Wrath sagged back against the slick walls, letting his head hang loose. Jesus Christ.

Scrubbing his face, his brain played tricks on him, flashing images of what the aftermath would have been like.

The moan that rose up his throat sounded like a foghorn. His brother’s sister. A fighter he respected. Ruined.

He owed that dog. As usual.

Stripping off his sweaty muscle shirt, he let it flop onto the floor as he shucked his nylon board shorts. Using his hand on the wall once again, he walked forward and knew when he got into the shower room because of the way the floor sloped. The faucet cranks were lined up on three sides and he zeroed in on them, feeling the slick circular drains under his bare feet.

Picking one at random, he turned on the water and braced himself against the cold rush that hit him square in the face.

God, that surge of anger. It was a familiar octane—but not anything he wanted back in his life again. That unholy burn had sustained him all those years between when his parents had been killed and when he’d met and mated Beth. He’d thought it was gone for good.

“Fuck,” he bit out.

Closing his eyes, he braced his palms by the showerhead and leaned into the heavy roping of his arms. His nasty mood made his head feel like it had a set of helicopter blades on it—and they were about two rotations short of separating his skull from the rest of his body.

God … damn.

He’d never thought about it before, but “insanity” was largely a hypothetical concept to the sane; a derogative slur to slam someone you didn’t respect; a descriptor applied to inappropriate behavior.

Standing in the shower, he realized that true insanity had nothing to do with PMS or “hitting the wall” or going on a bender and trashing a hotel room before you passed out. It wasn’t driving crazy or robbing a bank or temporarily taking your temper out on an inanimate object.

It was the removal of the world around you, a good-bye to sensation and awareness that was like a video camera manipulation—your internal shit got zoomed in and everything else, your mate, your job, your community, your health and well-being, went not just out of reach … but out of existence.