“Please.  I have a wife, kids.”

As if family somehow made you better than someone else?

That particular defense does seem kind of weak at times. I guess the idea is “please don’t hurt me, I have people who depend on me and who would be sad if I died or got hurt”, but that’s not particularly helpful if the person you’re pleading to doesn’t care more about sparing your family’s feelings than about you.

The idea nettled Bitch.  Life experience had taught her that it was all too often the opposite.  People were assholes, people were monsters.

And, yeah, it doesn’t exactly help that we literally just had Rachel reminiscing about how family is a touchy subject for her.

The exceptions were all too rare.  Far too many of those same people started a family just because they thought it was what they should do, and then they were assholes and monsters to a captive audience.

Oof.

The sad thing is she’s right. I don’t think it’s as frequent as she’s implying, but this is definitely a thing that happens.

She kicked him again, in the stomach.

The dude may have just unwittingly turned himself into a punching bag for Rachel to take out her family issues on.

He screamed as the kick made his arm, still in Ink’s jaws, wrench the wrong way.

Oww.

Or kicking bag, I suppose. So far it seems that’s more Rachel’s style here.

Looking at results for English keyboard layouts, it seems that some have quotation marks on the apostrophe like LHC’s and some have it on the 2 like my Norwegian keyboard.

…anyway, this isn’t important right now, let’s get back to the story.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” the man repeated the word.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

“You insulting me?  You trying to act big?’

At least he seems to have realized his error.

(Also, are “ and ’ next to each other on an English keyboard or something? That’s two instances of the apostrophe showing up instead of an end quotation mark over the span of three lines of dialogue.)

“What?”  The man’s eyes widened.  Was he staring at her, challenging her?  Was it a fear response?  Was he rallying to fight, trying to get a wider sense of his surroundings?

Hm.

Maybe he’s not the one responsible for the gunfire after all.

She could only guess.

“No,” he said, his eyes moving around, as if searching for help.

Hm, or maybe he didn’t realize there was a human in charge of the monsters outside his home.

Defiance?  Sarcasm?  A lie?

“I don’t think you realize how badly you fucked yourself.  You.  Shot.  My.  Dog.”  She looked at Angelica.

Do. Not. Hurt. The. Doggos.

Her baby wasn’t acting too hurt, but he’d shot her.  He could have killed her, if the bullet landed in just the right place.

Interesting. That implies the hellhounds do have weak spots.

Angelica flinched and backed away as the shots came, striking her flesh.

Don’t shoot the doggo!

There was another shot, and Bitch saw a flash from the window, a glimpse of a face.  Her face twisted with rage.  “Attack!”  her voice was shrill.  She leapt off Bentley’s back so he could go too.  “Fetch them!  Fetch!  Go, go!’

Fetch? Sounds like Rachel wants to have some words with whomever’s attacking.

Hm… civilians with the guts to fight back against Rachel’s “reign” of terror, or Fenrir’s Chosen?

As they’d done at the previous location, her dogs tore through the building.  This time, though, they came back with people in their jaws.  Arms, legs and torsos in fanged grips.  Men, women and children.

Good dogs.

Some screamed where the dogs didn’t know their own strength and bit too hard.

Ow.

She found the man she’d seen in the window and stalked over to him.

Hello.

And she didn’t know what to do about it.

Ouch.

A gunshot startled her from her thoughts.

Oh, hi there, present day plot!

“Go!” she shouted.  “Go!”

More cracks of gunfire echoed through the night as her pack arrived on the scene.

So someone’s decided to fight back? Or are these gunshots not aimed at her?

Angelica was there, her form hulking and rippling with muscle to the point that she couldn’t move as fast as she otherwise might.  That was fine.  Angelica couldn’t move as fast these days, anyways.  Not since Fog had hurt her.

Poor doggo. 😦

She was more comfortable like this; she was big, strong and able to move without pain.

Well, that’s good at least.

And now the others had forgiven her?  So easily?  She could see them fawning over the little traitor.  And there was nothing she could do about it.  They liked Taylor more.

Honestly, this is fair. Rachel has every right to not have forgiven Taylor, even without her lonely past and doggified brain. 

They would keep Taylor on the team and make Bitch leave if it came down to it.  She knew it in her gut.

It really does seem that way at this point.

So she’d done something stupid.  She’d tried to get rid of her teammate, and she’d done it in a way that haunted her.  More than anything, more than all of the people she’d hurt, the people she’d accidentally killed, or the days she’d scrounged in the trash for food when she’d been homeless, wandering the cities on her own, she hated herself for what she’d done to Taylor.

Yeeeah. That was low.

So what did you think of Taylor’s spiel afterwards?

She had acted like the people who haunted her memories, using what should have been a position of trust to try to hurt someone.

Yep.

In retrospect, even besides the lonely past, I find it rather appropriate that Rachel was the one most hurt by Taylor’s betrayal, the least willing to forgive her, and the one who is now feeling awful about betraying Taylor in turn, even if it was just a taste of Taylor’s own medicine.

After all, which trait is most responsible for the dog’s title of “Man’s Best Friend”?

Loyalty.