Page 196 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

His eyes didn’t leave mine. “Yes.”

The honesty should have angered me. It did. Somewhere. Not close enough to matter because Evelyn’s voice still sat inside my skull, soft and bright and poisonous.

She is where the leash landed.

I had spent my whole life being useful. A son, then a brother, then an enforcer. A body pointed toward the worst work so better men could keep their hands cleaner. I had accepted it because the pack needed me, because Ronan needed me, because the old laws made more sense when you were the thing they used to defend them.

I had thought Cassie was the first thing that had ever found me without needing what I could kill. Ridiculous, maybe. Impossible. Born from blood and a broken rite and a woman who had crashed into my life wearing torn wedding silk and fury.

Still, I had believed it. For one vicious, stupid stretch of days, I had believed the world had made room for something in me besides violence.

Now I knew better. The circle had not given me a mate. It had given my leash to the wrong hand. I had not been chosen. I had been handled.

Again.

The pain of it was too deep to rage through. Rage lived near the surface. This was underneath bone.

Ronan spoke carefully. “Ian.”

I stared at the stone under my hand. “Don’t.”

“You know what this means.”

“I know what Evelyn said.”

“She told the truth.”

My claws slid out slowly enough that the pain should have grounded me. It didn’t. “She told enough truth to hurt me. That is not the same thing.”

“No,” he said. “It is not. But the rite was corrupted. The circle was built to bind, not bond. The control was meant to settle through the marked female.”

I closed my eyes.

Marked female.

He would not say leash. He was kind enough for that. Cruel enough for everything else.

“Cassie did nothing,” I said. “She fell into a trap made for me.”

“Yes.”

“And now she bleeds for it.”

Ronan didn’t answer but he didn’t have to. I saw her again in the hunt course, pinned in mud beneath a Thorne wolf’s claws. I saw the blood at her hip. The terror in her eyes when I caged her with my own body afterward. I heard her voice finding me through the wolf when Ronan could not.

You found me. Now come back.

Not because she was mine. Because the magic had made me answer.

The thought split me open.

Everything that had saved me became suspect. Every touch. Every breath. Every time she had reached for me and the wolf had gone quiet. Every moment in her bed when I had thought restraint made me worthy of wanting her. Maybe none of it had been worthy. Maybe it had only been programming old enough to wear the moon’s skin.

Ronan stepped closer. “The council is moving.”

I opened my eyes.

His face looked carved down to the bone. Alpha first. Brother trapped somewhere behind it.