Ren didn't move.
There was nowhere to go. The skillet was in her lap, Kael was pinned under a paw the size of a dinner plate, and the tiger's open mouth hung right above her face.
She stared into the red and waited for the teeth.
They never came.
The tiger wrenched his head sideways, away from her, away from Kael. Then he drove his fangs into his own right foreleg.
CRUNCH.
Ren screamed.
The tiger didn't make a sound. His whole body locked rigid. His claws dug furrows in the dirt beside Kael's ribs, and his jaws stayed clamped on his own leg, right over the old wound, until fresh blood ran down through the white fur and dripped off his paw.
"Kaelen!" Kael grabbed at the thick ruff of his neck. "Let go!"
The tiger shook. Ren could hear him breathing hard through his nose, fast and ragged.
Kael stopped pulling. Pinned under his brother, he went still and laid one hand flat against the side of the tiger's neck. He didn't say anything else.
Then the tiger's jaws opened.
