Page 169 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“No,” I rasped.

The wolf’s hand tightened on my throat.

I looked into his pale eyes and forced the word out again. “No.”

The bond detonated. Not warmed. Not pulled.

Detonated.

The dark behind the half-shifted wolf moved. No, not moved. Opened. Ian came through it without a sound.

The wolf holding my throat had one second to hear him.

One.

Then Ian hit him from behind, and the world became blood. Not a clean fight. Not a heroic rescue with moonlight and music. Ian didn’t shove him away from me and square up like a man. He tore him off me with one clawed hand buried in the back of his neck and the other hooked under his jaw. The half-shifted wolf made a choking sound, and Ian drove him face-first into the stone so hard the rock cracked.

I heard bone break.

Ian lifted him and did it again. The second impact sprayed blood across the wall.

The gray wolf lunged for Ian’s side, and Ian turned on it. I had seen Ian controlled. I had seen him dangerous. I had felt the wolf under his skin like a storm behind glass.

This was not that.

This was the storm after the glass had shattered.

He caught the gray wolf mid-leap. His body was half-shifted and wrong in the dark, larger than a man, black claws hooked through fur, mouth full of teeth too sharp for a human face. The gray wolf’s jaws snapped near his cheek. Ian didn’t dodge. He let the teeth cut him so he could get closer.

Then he opened the wolf from throat to belly. The sound it made was high and terrible.

I slapped one hand over my mouth because I was going to be sick, scream, or both.

The first wolf released my ankle and ran.

Ian went after it.

I had never understood the phrase “like an animal” until I saw something that made animals look merciful. The fleeing wolf reached the hedge lane before Ian caught it. I didn’t see all of what happened because the wall blocked part of the view, but I heard it. The wet impact. The snarl cut short. A body hitting stone. Then another sound, lower and thicker, that my mind refused to translate.

Silence followed.

My ears rang. My throat hurt where claws had held it. My side burned. My ankle throbbed inside my shoe. I tried to sit up and failed, sliding back against the wall with a gasp that turned into something dangerously close to crying.

Then Ian came back. He walked out of the hedge lane covered in blood. Some of it was his.

Most of it was not.

His shirt hung open in ribbons. His hands were claws. His mouth was red. His eyes were gold without a trace of human brown left in them. Blood dripped from his chin onto his chest, then down over the black lines of muscle and torn fabric.

He looked at the dead wolves. Then at me. The bond flooded with one word so huge it drowned thought.

Mine.

I went still. Ian crossed the ground toward me.

“Ian!” Ronan shouted from somewhere beyond the course.

Ian didn’t slow.