Page 197 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“Their formal recommendation is execution before moonrise if we cannot break the mark,” he said.

The corridor became very still.

“For Cassie,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And her family.”

The smallest movement crossed his throat. That was answer enough.

My hand hit the wall. “Say it!”

Ronan’s eyes burned gold. “If the family forces exposure the council will demand they be put down with her.”

Put down.

I had used those words before. I had stood in rooms like this and listened while frightened elders built clean language around ugly necessity. I had waited by doors while votes were taken. I had gone out afterward and made the decision real with my hands, my teeth, my obedience.

Now Cassie stood on the other side of that phrase. Cassie, who had asked for one good thing before she died. Cassie’s father, who was furious and afraid because his daughter had vanished. Tessa, who had finally begun hearing what kind of man she had almost married. Even Grant, small and selfish and useless in a crisis, doomed because he had come to the wrong resort with the wrong woman at the wrong time.

“No,” I said.

Ronan stepped into my path. “Do not make it easy by hating the word.”

“I hate your mouth for shaping it.”

“I hate myself for shaping it.” His voice cracked through the Alpha control, and for one moment my brother looked almost young. “Do you think I want this? Do you think I want to stand here and tell you that I have to kill the woman you love because every other answer leads to war?”

The word love moved through me like a body being lowered into earth.

Love.

Even that had been stolen now. It had been dragged into Evelyn’s old magic and made suspect. My heart had knelt before a chain and called it holy because I had not known what else to name the feeling.

“I do not know what I love,” I said.

Ronan flinched.

His voice lowered. “Break it.”

I looked at him.

“Before the full moon,” he said. “Before it sets deeper. Before the council moves without me. Before Silas gets her. Before I have to give an order I cannot take back.”

“No.”

“Break it, Ian.”

“No.”

His hand came down on the back of my neck, hard and familiar. Brother, not Alpha. The grip dragged memory with it. Ronan pulling me out of my first battlefield. Ronan washing blood from my hair in a basin because our father had called me useful and Ronan had looked sick over it. Ronan teaching me control because no one else cared whether the weapon survived being used.

“Please,” he said.

The word landed worse than command. Ronan never begged unless command had failed and pride was no longer worth protecting.

“Don’t make me make the call,” he said. “You know what I have to do. You know they will not let the family go now. Her father is pushing. Tessa is asking questions. Grant is angry enough to talk and stupid enough to talk to the wrong person. If they see what we are, if Silas uses them, if the secret breaks, I have to protect the pack.”