Page 147 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

My hands opened slowly at my sides. “Yes.”

She held my stare another second, then stepped aside. “Find her.”

Cormac lifted his cane and struck it once against the stone.

The sound carried through the grounds.

I entered the training field and forced myself not to move too quickly. The wolf wanted speed and straight lines, nose to ground, body low, every thought narrowed to find, guard, return. I gave it breath instead, sorting the air one layer at a time.

Salt from the sea. Cypress resin. Old stone. Ronan above us, cold and controlled. Cormac near the gate, amused and watchful. Sava’s herbs, metal, and clean anger. Two guards on the western path. Beneath all that came Cassie.

Not blood first anymore. The wound was there, of course. The bitter trace of wolf magic in human skin, the bandage, the medicine, the fever she had survived because she was too stubborn to die when expected. Under all of it, stronger now, was her. Clean soap. Warm skin. Borrowed cotton. The fruit she had eaten at breakfast. The sharp edge of irritation. The salt of nerves. Beneath that, faint but undeniable, was the heat Sava had warned me about.

Cassie was waiting and the bond answered my attention with a low pull under my ribs.

I went left, away from the obvious ruins.

Her scent had crossed the stones, doubled back, and lingered near the first broken wall long enough to suggest she wanted me to think she had stopped there. She had left a stronger trail where she wanted me to find it, which meant she was not only hiding. She was playing the game back.

The wolf approved of her. So did the man.

A soft scrape came from the creek bed. A small stone rolled down the dry bank, dislodged on purpose, and I almost smiled because it was too convenient. Cassie had thrown it.

Clever woman.

I turned away from the sound and moved into the hedge lanes. The bond warmed as she felt me correct course, and somewhere ahead, her pulse changed too faintly for my ears but clearly enough for the bond to carry it. Fear, excitement, and anger at the excitement reached me in one tangled rush, and my body tightened in answer.

Not now.

I turned down the narrow lane and caught her scent stronger along the left hedge. She had brushed it with her uninjured hand, not by accident. A false trail. She had listened when I told her wolves followed what touched, and she had used the lesson against me before the hour was over. I followed the false trail for three steps, then stopped and looked back.

There.

A gap opened between two broken walls, barely wide enough for a person to slip through and too narrow for a wolf at speed. It was shaded from the terrace and hidden from the gate, with no direct wind to carry scent cleanly out. Cassie was not visible, but the air changed there. Her scent didn’t pour from it. It held still. She had found a pocket of dead air.

Very good.

The wolf went low inside me.

I crossed the distance without sound, and the bond flared as she felt me coming. A breath moved behind the wall, then stopped. Stone stood between us, but every inch of me knew she was there, and the control it took not to go around the wall and take the answer with my hands almost brought me to my knees.

“Cassie,” I said.

No answer came. Good. She should not answer.

I closed my eyes and let the bond pull. Heat moved through it slower now, with fear beneath it and desire beginning to wake underneath that. She didn’t want me because I had touched her. She didn’t want me because I stood over her. She wanted because I had found her, because the chase had spoken to something neither of us had named in daylight.

The wolf wanted teeth in the sweater at her shoulder. The man wanted her mouth under mine again.

“I found you,” I said.

Still, she gave me nothing.

Then fabric shifted, and her voice came low from behind the wall. “Prove it.”

The bond pulsed with her challenge, and the old law stirred beneath my skin in answer. Find didn’t mean see. Find didn’t mean scent. Find meant the wolf reached the mate, and the mate acknowledged him by yielding, running, fighting, or calling the next move.

Cassie was not yielding, which made the wolf’s pleasure immediate and violent.