Page 157 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Cassie felt it, and her face tightened. “Ian.”

I didn’t answer quickly enough.

She shifted onto her back carefully, wincing only when the bandage pulled. “I need to ask you something before everyone comes in here and starts speaking in wolf law.”

“All right.”

“What does the hunt actually prove?” She turned her head toward me. “Everyone keeps saying you have to find me and bring me back. That proves the bond. Fine. But what stops me from hiding somewhere easy? What stops you from just following the obvious trail, retrieving me, and everyone pretending this death pageant had a purpose?”

My silence changed the room.

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

I sat up slowly, keeping the sheet over her as I moved. “You didn’t understand.”

“I understood the part where I run from you.”

“No.” My jaw tightened. “You understood part of it. You’re not running from me.”

Her face went pale in a way that had nothing to do with morning. “Ian.”

“There will be others on the course.”

The bond went cold.

She stared at me.

“Like, witnesses?” she asked.

“No. Hunters.”

The word landed between us as something living.

I continued because stopping would be another kind of lie. “Old law allows challenge wolves on disputed ground. They are meant to test whether the claiming wolf can guard what he finds. Ronan has limited the number and chosen the inner course, but there will be others released after you.”

Cassie sat up despite the pain. “Released after me.”

“Yes.”

“To chase me.”

“To challenge the claim.”

Her laugh was soft and awful. “That is a very elegant way to say chase me.”

I reached for her, then stopped.

She saw that too.

“If they catch me first,” she said, “what happens?”

The wolf answered before I could, a violent certainty flooding through the bond so fiercely that Cassie inhaled. No one would touch her. No one would reach her. I would tear through the course, through law, through wolf, through blood, through anything with teeth or hands that came between me and the woman sitting in this bed with fear sharpening her scent.

Cassie’s eyes widened as the force of it reached her.

I pulled it back, but not fast enough.

“Ian.”