Page 19 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Malrec first.

Old didn’t mean harmless. He stood at the northern post with ash on his fingers and a blade at his hip, pretending age had made him holy instead of harder to punish.

Then Silas Thorne.

Slowly, if there was time.

The rival Alpha watched my brother with a smile too thin to hold peace. He had brought fifty wolves onto our land for a claiming rite and wanted us grateful for the restraint. I knew men like him. I had buried men like him. They all mistook ceremony for safety until someone opened their throat on the grass.

The third would be Holloway’s eastern elder, Cormac, because his left knee was weak and he kept touching the charm under his collar. Nerves or guilt. I had not decided which.

I hoped it was nerves. Guilt would make the night messy.

My wolf pressed against the inside of my skin. He had been quiet since sunset.

That was worse than pacing.

Quiet meant he had stopped arguing and started waiting.

I flexed my right hand once, slow enough that the watching wolves would read it as impatience instead of restraint.

My claws stayed buried.

Good.

The private lawn at Halcyon Ridge had been closed since sundown. The resort handled the humans with its usual perfection. Dinner on the west terrace. Complimentary champagne. A private family event on the east grounds. Apologies for any inconvenience. Smiles sharp enough to cut.

Humans obeyed velvet better than iron. They had no idea there were two hundred wolves behind the black hedges, standing around a claiming circle older than every law they trusted. They had no idea the man they would call resort security if they saw me was the reason half the packs on this coast kept their sons polite.

That was how it should be.

Humans were fragile, loud, and curious in ways that got blood on tile. Tonight, they needed to stay on their side of the property.

I needed to survive mine.

“Ian.”

My brother’s voice came from behind me.

I didn’t turn right away. Alpha or not, Ronan knew better than to come up behind me without warning. He had learned that at sixteen, when he startled me awake and I put him through a wardrobe before either of us remembered we were brothers.

He still had the scar above his left brow. He kept it because Alphas liked symbols.

“You are making the elders nervous,” he said.

“Good.”

Ronan came to stand beside me. “That was not a compliment.”

My brother looked made for rule. Black ceremonial coat. Silver clasp at his throat. Hair tied back. Shoulders relaxed in a way that told every wolf on the lawn he didn’t need to bare his teeth to own the ground under them.

I looked made for what happened when rule failed. No coat. No ornaments except the old pack mark burned into my left forearm. Shirt open at the throat because the rite required access to the neck. Bare feet on stone because tradition liked its sacrifices close to the dirt.

The elders called me enforcer. Executioner was more accurate, but it upset the families.

“Your wolf is close,” Ronan said.

“He has been close for thirty years.”