Page 200 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

When she opened them again, they were bright with anger. “Cassie is not a handle.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” My voice came rougher. “That is why she has to be free of me.”

Sava’s face hardened. “Ian.”

“Help me keep her alive tomorrow.”

“That sounds like goodbye.”

I said nothing and her mouth tightened. For a moment, I thought she might call for Ronan. She might use the blade. She might do something practical and terrible because she knew what wolves sounded like when they had chosen not to survive.

Instead she stepped aside and the mercy of it nearly broke me.

“I will be outside,” she said.

“I know.”

“If you do something stupid, I will be very angry.”

A breath moved through me. Not quite a laugh.

“You usually are.”

“Yes,” she said. “Do not make me grieve you and be right at the same time.”

I opened the door before I answered that badly. Cassie lay curled beneath the blanket, her face turned toward the place I had been when I left. The lamp had been lowered until the room was all amber shadow. Her hair spilled across the pillow. Her mouth was soft with drugged sleep, but the tension remained between her brows.

I crossed to the bed and sat beside her. Her hand moved almost immediately, searching, so I gave her my fingers. She caught them with a faint sigh.

The binding warmed. I forced myself to use that word.

Binding.

Pain moved through my chest with the correction. It felt like betrayal, though I didn’t know whether I was betraying her, myself, or the lie that had kept me breathing.

I looked at our joined hands. Cassie’s fingers were human. Warm. Mortal. There were small scratches along her knuckles from the hunt. Dirt still lived beneath one nail no matter how carefully Sava had cleaned her.

Nothing about her was a leash.

That was the part Evelyn could never understand. The magic might have used her as one. The circle might have turned her touch into command. The bond might be rotten all the way down to its first root.

Cassie was still Cassie. She was still the woman who had looked at a room full of predators and understood the politics faster than half of them. The woman who had wanted one night for herself before death. The woman who had laughed while bleeding because if she stopped laughing, the fear might win. The woman who had called me back, whether by magic or courage or both.

She deserved to walk out of this world whole. She deserved to forget the shape of my teeth.

I pushed the binding away and pain struck hard enough to darken the edges of my vision. My free hand curled in the sheet but I didn’t make a sound.

Cassie frowned in her sleep and I stopped at once. The pain eased by degrees, leaving a hollow ache where hope had been.

So that was the edge.

Good.

I would need to know it tomorrow.