Page 177 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“What?”

“That’s you.”

I closed my eyes.

Her thumb traced the edge of my mouth. “The wolf doesn’t look at me like that.”

“How does he look at you?”

“Like the world is a threat and I’m the last living thing in it.”

“He is not entirely wrong.”

“And you?”

I opened my eyes. Her face was close, bruised, pale, alive.

“I look at you and remember the world has something in it I cannot survive losing.”

Her lips parted. The words had come too close to the thing I was not ready to name. Too close to the truth Ronan would smell on me the moment he walked in. Too close to a future I had no right to want when every path the pack understood ended with Cassie dead.

Cassie slid her hand into my hair and pulled me down.

The kiss was not gentle at first because neither of us had enough peace left for gentleness. She made a small sound that went through me. I broke away at once, checking her face, her body, the tightness around her eyes.

“I’m all right,” she said.

“You’re in pain.”

“I’m in a lot of things.”

A laugh almost escaped me. It came out broken.

Her fingers tightened in my hair. “I don’t want the hunt to be the last thing my body remembers tonight.”

I went still.

Cassie held my gaze, and there was nothing unclear in her face now. She was exhausted. Hurt. Frightened down to the bone. She was also present, choosing, angry at the idea that terror got the final claim over her skin.

“I want you,” she said. “Carefully.”

My control strained until I felt every seam of it.

“You do not have to prove anything to me.”

“I’m not proving anything. I am taking something back.”

That was the line. Not the bond. Not the wolf. Not the heat still living between us after the course. Her choice, placed in my hands with all the trust I had almost lost the right to hold.

I kissed her again, slower this time.

It cost me. Good. Let it cost. Let every second teach the wolf that wanting her didn’t mean taking. Let him learn the shape of her breath, the places I could touch, the places I could not. Let him understand that the woman in this bed was not prey, not prize, not proof for a council to argue over.

Cassie’s hand moved down my chest, fingers dragging over torn fabric. “You need to get out of this shirt.”

“There is a doctor outside the door.”

“I assume she knows shirts come off.”