Page 185 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“I have not moved.”

“You thought it loudly.”

Cassie lifted a weak hand. “For the record, I also thought it loudly.”

Sava muttered, “I need a different profession.”

Ronan looked at Cormac. “Seal the exits. Quietly. No one leaves the resort without my order.”

“Already started.”

“Find the missing guards.”

“Done.”

“Separate Evelyn from her people.”

Cormac’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “That may be taken as an accusation.”

“It is an accusation wearing manners.”

“I can work with that.”

Ronan turned to Sava. “Can Cassie be moved?”

“No.”

“Sava.”

“No,” she repeated, with the full force of every year she had kept wolves alive despite themselves. “She can be guarded. She can be watched. She can be allowed to sleep. If you move her tonight because politics has become inconvenient, you will be doing Thorne’s work for him.”

Ronan accepted that with a curt nod.

Then he looked at me. I knew what he saw. Bare chest. Cassie’s blood still under my nails. A bond deepened past caution. A weapon with his loyalty split open and rewired in front of witnesses.

I also knew what he needed.

“I stay with her,” I said.

His eyes hardened.

I held his stare. “You need me contained. You need her guarded. For once, those are the same order.”

Ronan said nothing for a long moment.

Then he looked at Cassie. “Do you want him here?”

The question surprised her. It surprised me more.

Cassie looked at me, then at Ronan. She was exhausted, hurt, and shaken by too many truths at once. My confession was still there between us. I could feel it in the careful way she didn’t touch it yet.

Good.

She didn’t owe me an answer because my heart had finally become too heavy to hide.

“I want him here,” she said. “I also want everyone to stop making life-altering threats until I’ve had at least four hours of sleep and maybe a carbohydrate.”

Cormac nodded gravely. “A reasonable platform.”