Page 172 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

A Dangerous Admission

Ian

I carried Cassie into the suite because letting anyone else touch her was still beyond me.

Some part of me knew that was a problem. Some part of me knew there were eyes on my back as I crossed the threshold, that guards had moved away from the door with the quick, careful obedience of men who didn’t want to find out what happened if they blocked me. Sava followed close at my side, speaking in low, clipped orders. Ronan’s voice cut through the hall behind us, cold enough to freeze blood, shutting down the council before any of them could decide my mate was a problem best solved while she was weak.

I understood pieces. Cassie’s blood on my hands. The torn ruin of Thorne throats beneath my teeth.

Sava saying, “Ian, if you crush her, I will put silver in your spine myself.”

Ronan saying my name with command in it, and the command breaking against me like rain on stone.

Cassie’s fingers twisted in my shirt. Her voice, raw and shaking, where nothing else had reached.

I’m alive. You found me. Now come back.

I had come back.

Mostly.

The suite was too bright. Too full of clean linen, cut flowers, polished floors, and the metallic stink of Cassie’s blood beneath all of it. My wolf hated the room. Too many corners. Too many doors. Too many places a threat could wait. I carried her straight to the bed because Sava pointed there, and because Cassie made a small sound against my chest that sliced straight through what was left of my control.

“Easy,” she whispered.

The word was for me, which made it worse. I laid her down slowly, one inch at a time, fighting my own body when it wanted to curl over her, cover her, hide her from every living thing that had watched her bleed.

Her clothes were ruined. The fabric had been torn at the thigh, ripped along one side, smeared with mud and red. There were claw marks down her arm, shallow enough that I had not killed for them twice, and deeper punctures along her hip where the half-shifted Thorne bastard had pinned her. Bruises were already blooming around her wrists. A thin cut crossed her cheekbone.

Her face was too pale. Her eyes stayed on mine.

“Ian,” Sava said.

I turned my head toward her and she stopped three feet from the bed.

Sava had delivered half the pack into the world and cut silver out of grown wolves while they screamed. She had stared down elders, Alphas, war-mad youths, grieving mothers, and me on my worst nights. She had never looked afraid of me.

Now she looked careful. That got through.

I looked down at my hands. My fingers were still tipped in claws. I closed them slowly until the bones dragged back beneath skin. The shift hurt. Good. Pain gave the wolf something to chew on that was not the room.

Sava watched the claws disappear. “I need to clean her wounds.”

No.

The answer came up from the oldest part of me, so hard my jaw locked around it.

Cassie reached for my wrist. Her fingers were cold. “Let her.”

The wolf didn’t like it. The man understood.

I stepped back. One step. Only one.

Sava moved in at once, and I hated the competence of her hands because they touched Cassie where blood had dried. I hated the bowl of water, the strips of cloth, the sharp smell of antiseptic. I hated the way Cassie’s mouth tightened when Sava lifted the torn edge of her dress to see the punctures on her hip.

I hated the fact that I had been there too late to keep those wounds from happening.

“Do not stand over me breathing like that,” Sava said without looking at me. “You are making the air hostile.”