Page 130 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Ronan turned to Lucien, and I realized quickly he hadn’t known. “Who is behind center?”

Lucien’s face changed and he crossed to the center door and opened it. A guard stood inside. Young. Male. Unfamiliar. His face went bloodless when Ronan looked at him.

“I told you to clear the rooms,” Ronan said.

The guard lowered his head. “Alpha, I was assigned to observe.”

“By whom?”

The guard swallowed. Ian came out of the right room with a silence that made the corridor smaller.

“By whom?” Ronan repeated.

“Elder Malrec.”

Of course.

The day had been missing a new reason to hate the elderly.

Ian stepped toward him. I felt the wolf before anyone moved, a clean, cold focus.

The guard shook once.

“He told me only to observe,” the guard said. “Only to report whether the human could sense the enforcer.”

“The human,” I said.

His eyes flicked to me and away.

Ian stopped in front of him. “Say her name.”

The guard went still, so did I.

Ian’s voice lowered. “If you are sent to measure her, threaten her, judge her, or carry word about her body to old men who want her dead, you will use her name.”

The mark pulsed, much hotter than before. I could not pretend that one was only his.

The guard swallowed. “Cassie Morgan.”

“Again.”

“Cassie Morgan.”

Ian stepped back. Ronan watched his brother with a face carved from stone.

Sava watched me and the monitor at my wrist had betrayed me again.

I looked at it. Then at Sava.

“Don’t.”

“I said nothing.”

“You are thinking medically.”

“That is my profession.”

Lucien escorted the guard out.