The traitor moved fast, faster than Elena's eyes could fully track, but Rohan moved faster than him.
He caught the man's wrist mid-strike, twisting hard enough that the blade clattered free onto the porch boards, and drove him back against the doorframe with a force that cracked old wood behind his shoulders. The man snarled, tried to shift, and tried to bring claws where a blade had failed, and Rohan slammed him down before the change could finish, pinning him with a knee to the chest and one hand locked hard around his throat.
Elena had frozen for exactly one heartbeat, her whole body screaming at her to run, before some older, steadier instinct took over instead, the same one that had kept her standing straight through a rejection ceremony in front of three hundred witnesses less than
