Page 176 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“Come here.”

I didn’t move.

Her eyes sharpened, tired as they were. “Ian.”

“You’re hurt.”

“I noticed.”

“I should not be close to you while I’m like this.”

“You were close to me in the course.”

My jaw tightened. “That is the problem.”

“No,” she said, and there it was again, that clear line through panic and pain. “The problem was three Thorne wolves trying to kill me.”

“I caged you beneath me.”

“You guarded me.”

“I didn’t know that at first.”

“I did.”

The words were quiet but they landed in the center of my chest. Cassie shifted, then winced. I was on my feet before I meant to be.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Then come here so I stop trying.”

I stood beside the bed, too large, too bloody, too dangerous for the softness of the room.

She tugged at my hand.

I let her pull me down because refusing her felt worse than obedience. I sat on the edge of the mattress, careful not to jostle her. She looked at my face the way she had in the course, when mud streaked her cheek and fear had nearly swallowed her, and still she had reached for me.

“You came back when I called you,” she said.

“You should never have had to.”

“Probably not. Add it to the list of complaints I’m filing with werewolf management.”

“Cassie.”

Her humor faded. “I need to know you’re still here.”

“I am.”

“I need more than the chair.”

The bond pulled. It was not the fever-hunger from before, not the sharp, punishing drive of the mark in its early days. This was deeper and more dangerous. It moved with her voice, with the salt of drying tears she had not let fall, with the bruises on her wrists and the courage it took for her to ask anything of me after what she had seen me do.

I bent slowly and pressed my forehead to hers. Her breath caught. My hand went to the mattress beside her hip, bracing my weight away from her. I would not trap her. I would not press where she was torn. I would not let my body forget the difference between shelter and cage.

Cassie lifted her uninjured hand to my jaw, her touch was light, but I shuddered under it.

“There,” she whispered.