Page 205 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Cassie’s eyes moved between us. She was bruised, pale, sitting upright in borrowed sleep clothes with a blanket around her waist and the mark hidden beneath Sava’s bandage. She still looked like the only person in the room who understood what silence meant.

“What happened?” she asked.

Ronan took one step closer to the foot of the bed. He didn’t sit. Ronan rarely sat when a blade would have suited the conversation better.

“The council has made its ruling.”

Cassie’s face went very still. I felt her fear through the binding before she buried it. Quick. Controlled. Human and brave in a way no wolf in that council chamber deserved to witness.

Sava’s jaw flexed. She knew at least some of it. Maybe Ronan had told her enough. Maybe she had read the rest in my face.

Cassie looked at me first. I had prepared for that. I had practiced the lie all night without words, building a wall inside my chest so the truth would not spill into her.

I kept my voice low. “Listen to him.”

Her gaze stayed on me a moment longer.

Then she looked back at Ronan. “All right.”

Ronan’s throat moved once. “Silas has been located enough to confirm he is still acting against this pack, though not enough to seize him. We will deal with Thorne first.”

“That was not the ruling.”

“No,” Ronan said. “It was not.”

Rain tapped the glass.

Cassie waited.

Ronan’s hands were relaxed at his sides. Too relaxed. Alpha control locked over the man beneath until nothing human could leak through unless it broke bone getting out.

“The council will not allow the mark to set,” he said. “By moonrise, this ends.”

The words didn’t sound like death and that made them worse.

Cassie blinked once. There was no dramatic reaction. No tears. No shouting. Something behind her eyes simply went numb, as if her mind had stepped backward from a door it could not close.

“Tonight,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Because tomorrow I become inconvenient in a more permanent way.”

Sava muttered, “That is one word for it.”

Ronan’s gaze flicked to her. Sava stared back until he looked away.

Cassie nodded slowly, almost to herself. “So the old men in the murder basement voted.”

“Cassie,” I said.

“No, I’m just organizing my schedule.” Her voice stayed light, but it had no warmth in it. “Breakfast, maybe painkillers, supernatural execution at moonrise. Very full day.”

The binding pulled toward her.

I didn’t let my grief answer.

Ronan’s face tightened. “I am not here to mock you with procedure.”