Page 191 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Her voice was strained, but it carried clean through the wall. “Dad, stop letting them make this about you being difficult. Ask where she is. Ask why no one will let us speak to her without someone standing there.”

Smart girl.

The thought came from somewhere fierce and unexpected.

Grant answered with smooth annoyance. “Tessa, everyone is upset, but making a scene is not helping. The venue is already under pressure. If we keep escalating, we can forget any chance of salvaging the weekend.”

The silence that followed had weight. I knew the shape of that silence. It was the moment when a woman heard exactly what a man valued and could no longer pretend she had misunderstood him.

Tessa’s voice came colder. “My sister is missing.”

“She is not missing. She got drunk and fell. I know this is emotional for you, but we all knew this weekend would be hard for Cassie.”

My growl started before I could stop it.

Cormac shifted closer.

Tessa said, “Say that again.”

Grant should have stopped.

He didn’t.

“I am saying Cassie has a pattern. She gets overwhelmed. She makes choices. Then everyone else has to manage the fallout.”

Cassie’s father exploded.

There was a scrape of furniture, then several voices at once. A woman cried. The staffer tried to regain control. Grant said something low I could not make out. Tessa cut through all of them.

“No. I want him to finish. I want my fiancé to explain why my sister vanishing is inconvenient for his wedding.”

Another silence.

This one felt different even from where I stood. Tessa had finally seen the rot beneath the flowers. The satisfaction that moved through me was brief and vicious. It had no place in the hall outside a room full of doomed humans.

Cormac’s voice came low. “We need to move.”

Cassie’s father shouted again. “I am calling the police.”

The staffer tried to soothe him. “The storm is affecting service across parts of the property.”

“Then I’ll walk until I find service.”

That would get him killed. Maybe not by intent. Maybe by panic. Maybe by some guard too young to know the difference between exposure and a frightened father. Maybe by a council wolf who had already decided Cassie’s family belonged in the same sentence as containment.

My hands curled.

Cormac stepped into my line of sight. “Ronan has men watching them. If you walk into that room, every human there learns exactly what we are before we know where Silas is.”

“They are running out of lies.”

“And time.”

The council annex sat beneath the old spa wing, hidden behind staff doors and a corridor lined with stone thick enough to swallow screams. Long before the resort became a place for destination weddings and rich men with soft hands, this part of the building had been built for Alpha business.

Negotiation. Judgment. Execution, if judgment failed.

Ronan waited outside the holding room. He looked like he had not moved in an hour. Dark clothes, straight spine, Alpha control locked so tightly around him that I could smell the strain beneath it.