Page 150 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

The question was simple, which made it worse and the wolf answered yes before I could.

Sava answered first. “No.”

Cassie’s eyes flicked to her. “Why?”

Sava’s expression stayed calm. “Because I need to check your bandage, and Ian needs to stand somewhere else until he remembers how to breathe normally.”

Cormac coughed into his fist.

Cassie lifted her chin. “That was unnecessary.”

“It was necessary enough,” Sava said. “Move.”

The answer was not the full truth, but it was true enough for the field.

Cassie looked back at me, and the bond carried what her face didn’t quite show. She liked that I wanted to follow. She liked that I didn’t. The feeling reached me with enough clarity that I had to turn my head and breathe through my mouth.

Sava noticed, of course. Her look said everything she didn’t say in front of Ronan, Cormac, and two council watchers on the west path.

Distance. Control. Decide before the bond decides for you.

I nodded once.

Cassie let Sava take her toward the east wing. She looked back only when they reached the doors, then she was gone.

The training ground felt colder after she left.

Ronan approached, but before he could speak, Cormac’s cane tapped against stone. The old wolf looked toward the closed doors, then at me with amusement sharpened into something almost serious.

“Well,” Cormac said. “If the council wanted proof that the mark is false, this morning didn’t help them.”

Ronan’s eyes cut to him. “You will say that tomorrow?”

“I will say what I saw.” Cormac’s gaze moved to me. “Whether that helps depends on whether your enforcer remembers he is proving a bond, not satisfying a chase.”

The wolf bared its teeth inside my skin.

Cormac smiled slightly. “Good. He heard me.”

I left before I answered with something Ronan would have to explain. When I returned to the east wing, Sava was waiting outside Cassie’s suite.

Alone.

My body went still. “Is she hurt?”

“No.”

“Fever?”

“Low.”

“Pain?”

“Managed.”

“Then why are you outside?”

Sava looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with medicine. “Because she is dressed, clean, fed, and irritated with me, which I take as a sign of improvement. Lucien brought her suitcase, and her own clothes helped.”