Page 193 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“I am being careful. If I were not, you would already be in pieces and sent home in a box with a diplomatic apology attached.”

Evelyn’s mouth tightened.

Ronan stepped closer. “Silas is gone. His soldiers are dead. His plot is exposed enough to stain every Thorne wolf in this building, and you are sitting in my holding room with your hands in the middle of it. Tell the truth while it still has value.”

For one moment, Evelyn looked exactly like what she was, cornered. Then her gaze slid back to me, and malice gave her somewhere to stand.

“You still do not know,” she said.

I went still.

Her smile returned, smaller and more poisonous. “Oh, Ian. They have been kinder to you than I expected.”

Ronan’s voice went low. “Tell him.”

“Tell him what? That your priests are fools? That your council guards rotten laws and calls them sacred? That a claiming circle is only safe because wolves forget old magic can be cut open and rethreaded?”

My pulse slowed and the wolf inside me lifted its head.

Evelyn leaned back as much as the cuffs allowed. “The circle was altered.”

“We know,” I said.

“No,” she said softly. “You know someone tampered. You do not know what was made.”

The room seemed to pull tighter around us.

Ronan’s eyes stayed on me. “It was not meant to bond.”

Evelyn laughed.

“No,” she said. “It was meant to bind.”

The word struck something under my ribs.

Bind.

Not bond.

Evelyn watched the impact with open delight.

“You were supposed to bite me,” she said. “Your wolf was supposed to accept what the circle fed him. My blood was in the command oil. Bitterroot under the witness stones. Ash compound along the ward line. A little old language, a little moon pressure, and your poor loyal wolf would have thought surrender felt like fate.”

My claws pushed beneath my nails.

Evelyn didn’t stop. She had found blood in the water.

“It would have settled under the mark by the full moon. I would not have needed your affection. Silas didn’t care if you loved me. He needed your obedience dressed as instinct.”

I could hear my heartbeat.

No.

Not my heartbeat. Cassie’s. The bond carried the faintest echo of her sleeping pulse, distant and warm upstairs, where Sava guarded the door.

Evelyn’s eyes gleamed. “A suggestion here. A panic there. A flash of rage when Ronan stood too close. You would have killed your brother with tears in your eyes and no memory clean enough to save you.”

Ronan’s face looked carved from stone. I looked at him. He had already heard this. Maybe not all of it, but enough.