Page 210 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

She took one slow step, then another. I stayed near enough to catch her and far enough to let her pretend I would not.

At the bathroom door, she paused and looked back at me.

“Ian.”

“Yes.”

“If you’re lying badly, improve before I get back.”

I nodded.

She looked as if she wanted to say more.

Then exhaustion stole the strength for it. She went inside with Sava’s arm braced around her waist. Sava left the door open only a crack, enough that I could hear water run and Cassie mutter a low curse when the movement pulled at her stitches.

My hands curled.

Sava’s voice came from inside the bathroom. “I warned you.”

Cassie answered, “I am being dignified in my suffering.”

“You called the towel a bastard.”

I closed my eyes. There she was. The woman beneath the blood, beneath the binding, beneath every law trying to make her smaller than survival.

I stood in the center of the suite and held my grief so still it could have been carved.

A few minutes later Sava came out alone and pulled the bathroom door mostly closed behind her. Steam slipped into the room. Cassie was still inside, moving slowly, water running again.

Sava faced me.

“No,” she said.

I looked at her.

“No,” she repeated. “Whatever version of noble death you have built in your head, stop building.”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“I have watched you lie to Ronan since you were fourteen. You are better at it now. You are not good enough to use it on me.”

I said nothing.

She stepped closer. “What did they tell you?”

“You know enough.”

“I know Evelyn told the truth cruelly and Ronan used the truth like a knife because he thinks knives are the only tools left. I know you came back from that corridor looking like a dead man who misplaced the grave.”

My throat tightened.

Sava’s voice softened. “Whatever they told you, Ian, it does not make you only what they tried to make of you.”

The words landed badly. I looked toward the bathroom door. Steam curled through the crack. Cassie moved inside, careful and quiet, gathering herself piece by piece because she wanted to meet death looking like herself.

“I was always what they tried to make of me,” I said.

“No.”