Page 170 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“Ian,” Ronan ordered, and this time the Alpha power in his voice struck the air hard enough that even I felt it.

Ian didn’t even look at him. That was when I understood. He was gone. Not angry. Not mostly wolf. Not half-listening under all that blood.

Gone.

Ronan could not reach him. Sava could not reach him. The pack could not reach the weapon they had spent years teaching to kill on command, because someone had put me under teeth and now every command in him had burned down to one law.

Mine.

Ian dropped over me so fast I flinched. His hands hit the stone on either side of my body, claws scraping grooves into rock. He caged me against the wall, chest heaving, head lowered near my injured shoulder. Blood dripped onto the ground beside my hip. His breath came rough and hot against my throat.

I could not move, every primitive part of my body knew exactly how fast he could make me dead if he forgot who I was.

“Ian,” I whispered.

The wolf snarled.

Not at me.

At the space around me. At footsteps. At Ronan getting closer. At Sava moving along the edge of the creek bed with her bag. At every living thing that dared exist near my blood.

Ronan stopped twenty feet away.

His voice changed. “Ian, stand down.”

The snarl that answered him made every guard along the wall lift a weapon.

Ian’s head dipped lower. His nose dragged along the side of my throat, not gentle, not sexual, not even fully aware. Scenting. Counting my pulse. Checking life in the only language the wolf still understood.

His mouth opened near the bite and my entire body locked.

“No,” I said.

The word was small. Too small. His teeth hovered over the place he had marked me.

The bond was not warm now. It was a wildfire. Terror, protection, rage, blood, want, pain, all of it moving too fast for me to separate. His need to hold. My need to survive. His need to prove.

I lifted my shaking hand.

Ronan said, “Cassie, don’t.”

For once, I ignored the Alpha because apparently almost dying had given me a rich new disrespect for authority.

I put my hand on Ian’s face. He jerked as if the touch hurt.

“Ian,” I said again, stronger this time. “Look at me.”

His eyes stayed fixed on my throat.

“No.” My fingers slid against blood and skin and the sharp edge of his jaw. “Not the blood. Me.”

He trembled over me. That was somehow worse than stillness.

“I’m alive,” I said. “You found me.”

A rough sound tore out of him. The bond surged, and for a second I saw what he saw. My body under claws. My blood on stones. The wolf’s hand at my throat.

Too late, too late, almost too late.