Page 183 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“You are using it to make what I feel sound like corruption.”

His eyes narrowed. “Can you tell the difference?”

The question should have enraged me.

It did.

It also found the place where my fear lived. Could I tell the difference between bond and choice? Between wolf and man? Between the magic forced through a corrupted rite and the moment Cassie’s hand touched my face in the dark?

I looked at her.

She was watching me now, all exhaustion and guarded breath. The bond pulled, but beneath it, around it, there was the woman who had looked at me after the first night and expected me to regret her. The woman who had stood in a council chamber full of predators and cut through their rituals with plain human sense. The woman who had wanted one good thing for herself before death. The woman who had called me back from the edge without begging, without breaking, without surrendering herself to do it.

I knew the difference. I knew exactly where the bond ended. It ended nowhere near the beginning of what she had become to me.

“I love her,” I said.

Cassie stopped breathing.

Sava’s hand stilled around the medical cloth.

Ronan’s face changed, only slightly, but I knew him better than anyone living. I saw the blow land.

I didn’t take it back.

My voice steadied around the truth. “Call the bond damaged or false if it helps you think. Call the rite warped. Call the council terrified and our enemies opportunists. I love her. That is mine. Not the moon’s. Not the circle’s. Not Thorne’s. Mine.”

Cassie stared at me, stricken and silent. I didn’t ask anything of her. I would not put one more weight on her while she sat bruised in a bed with death still circling the room in respectable language.

Ronan looked from me to her. When he spoke, the anger had gone quieter. More dangerous. “Then you are closer to breaking than I feared.”

“No,” I said. “I am closer to choosing.”

“You have never chosen against this pack.”

“I have never had to choose between the pack and murdering an innocent woman.”

“You think that is what I am asking?”

“I think you are dressing it better.”

Ronan’s eyes flashed gold and mine answered.

Sava slammed the metal bowl down on the table so hard water jumped the rim. “For fuck’s sake.”

Both of us turned. She stood between the bed and the room, not physically large enough to stop either of us and somehow the only person there with the sense to try.

“Cassie is injured,” Sava said. “Ian is hanging on to control by his fingernails. Ronan, you are using your Alpha voice in a sickroom because you are scared and too proud to call it that. Ian, you are two breaths away from challenging your brother beside the woman you are claiming to protect. If either of you takes one more step toward disaster, I will start sedating people alphabetically.”

Cassie blinked. “Does Ronan count as A for Alpha or R?”

“Sick women do not get to help.”

“I was clarifying the medical protocol.”

Sava pointed at her without looking. “Drink your water.”

Ronan dragged in a breath. So did I. The gold faded from his eyes first. Mine took longer.