Page 106 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

He was using Tessa’s sweetness as a complaint, my injury as permission, and our old sex as a key he believed still fit the lock.

My hand tightened around the paper.

Behind me, Ian went very still. The bond had changed. Until then, Ian’s feelings had reached me in hard shapes. Guilt. Rage. Restraint. The wolf’s brutal need to guard. The constant pressure of a man trying not to become the worst thing in the room.

This was…different. It moved through me hot and dark, not scattered, not wild.

Jealousy.

Ian’s jealousy didn’t feel petty. It didn’t feel like Grant’s old territorial performances, his hand at the small of my back when another man laughed too hard at something I said, his questions afterward that made my friendliness sound like betrayal.

Ian’s jealousy felt like teeth under skin. A locked jaw. A wolf staring at the scent of another man on something that had no right to come near my hands. And underneath that, worse because it was quieter, was hurt. Not romantic hurt, nothing so simple. A deep animal confusion that Grant could write about my mouth, my body, old fire, and still be breathing in the same world where Ian had nearly destroyed himself for touching my hand without permission.

The feeling hit so hard I looked up. Ian stood beside the chair, his face utterly controlled. His eyes were not gold, which was the strangest part. His eyes were dark and steady, but every line of him had gone murderous. The tendons in his forearm stood out. His shoulders looked too broad for the civilized garden around us. His mouth was firm, almost cruel in its restraint.

I had known he was attractive, in the abstract. The way a storm was impressive before it took your roof. But I had not let myself notice him as a man. Not really. Not with the bite burning under my skin and his wolf between us like a loaded gun.

Now the bond put his jealousy inside me, and my body noticed everything all at once.

The size of him. The scar near his jaw. The way his hair fell slightly over his forehead and had loose strands at his neck from where it was tied back. The deep dark color of his eyes. The way he was choosing, second by second, not to cross the space between us and take the letter from me. Not to crush it. Not to go find Grant and turn all that polished hunger into blood on stone.

He wanted to.

God help me, I could feel that he wanted to. And he was not doing it.

My pulse kicked hard enough that Sava looked at me. Ian’s gaze dropped to the monitor and the jealousy vanished behind concern so fast it almost left me dizzy.

“What does it say?” Ronan asked.

I folded the letter once. “Nothing useful.”

Ian’s eyes lifted to mine, he knew that was not true.

Ronan held out his hand. “Cassie.”

“No.”

The word came out calm, which surprised everyone, including me.

Ronan’s face hardened. “If Carrington is making threats or trying to interfere with containment, I need to know.”

“He is not making threats.”

Ian’s voice was low. “He upset you.”

I looked at him. The jealousy was still there, buried now under control. I could feel the edges of it. Hot. Humiliatingly satisfying in a way I refused to examine while conscious.

“Yes,” I said. “That does not mean he gets a response.”

I looked down at the folded letter. Grant wanted words. Anger. Denial. Outrage. Anything he could hold up and say, see, there is still something between us. I had given Grant years of explanations. He had eaten them all and asked why I was starving.

“No response,” I said.

Ian’s shoulders shifted as something in him eased.

“You are certain?” Ronan asked.

“Yes.”