Page 198 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

His grip tightened. “And if I give the order, you will kill every wolf who tries to obey it. Then I have to put you down too.”

For one breath, neither of us moved. Put you down too. I should have felt fury, instead I just felt tired. Not of fighting. Fighting was simple. Fighting had always been the part of life I understood. I was tired of being the thing everyone reached for when they needed blood on the floor. Tired of discovering that even desire could be made into a harness. Tired of wanting a life that had never been offered to me without a cost hidden in the roots.

I thought of Cassie sleeping upstairs, her hand searching the empty sheet when I left. I thought of the way she had looked at me after I said I loved her, stunned and silent and too injured to carry one more truth.

Good. She should not have to carry it. She should not have to carry any of this.

Ronan was still watching me. Waiting for an answer. I finally understood there was no answer I could give him that would save us both.

So I gave him nothing.

“I need you to let me try to control this,” he said. “I need you to trust me.”

I looked at my brother. I loved him.

That was the first goodbye.

It came silently, with the memory of blood in a basin and the boy he had been before leadership turned his kindness into calculation. I loved him, and tomorrow I might have to go through him. If he stood between Cassie and the door, I would go through him.

He deserved better from me but Cassie deserved life more.

I stepped out of his grip and Ronan’s hand fell slowly.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

I thought of the bond inside my chest. The binding. The leash. Whatever name made it honest. If I tore it out before the full moon, it would kill me. I knew that with a certainty that lived deeper than law. A wolf didn’t survive having a mate bond severed at the root. Maybe Cassie would. She was human. The magic had never been made for her body. It might burn her, scar her, hurt her enough that she would hate me for it if she lived.

Let her hate me. Let her live.

I would break it. Then I would use whatever time I had left to get her family out. If guards tried to stop me, I would kill them. If the council barred the way, I would turn their old laws red. If Ronan sent men after her, I would bury friends. If Ronan came himself, I would pray he was faster than grief.

And Silas.

Silas had built the trap. Silas had put Evelyn in that circle. Silas had turned Cassie into collateral and me into a knife aimed at my brother’s throat.

I would find him before the end and I would make sure he knew exactly what kind of weapon he had stolen.

“I am going back to Cassie,” I said.

Ronan’s eyes sharpened. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one you get.”

“Do not make a martyr of yourself.”

A strange calm opened inside me. “I was never holy enough for that.”

“Ian.”

I turned away.

His voice followed me, stripped down and rough. “Do not make me lose you too.”

I stopped. There was the second goodbye, and it hurt more because he had given it to me. I didn’t look back. If I looked back, he would see everything. He would see the decision. He would see that his brother was already walking toward death and only waiting for the right door to open.

“You should have thought of that before you made peace with her death,” I said.

Then I left him in the corridor.