Page 220 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Silas’s voice slid on. “That was meant to be Evelyn. A clean political arrangement. His teeth, her hand, my command moving through her when needed.”

There were sounds behind me. My mother sobbing. Someone whispering, “What is he talking about?” Tessa, maybe. Grant swore under his breath, all polish gone. Dad said something ugly and confused that probably involved lawsuits, hell, and federal prison.

None of them understood.

Hell I barely understood, and the thing had been carved into my shoulder.

Silas glanced toward the wolves around him, then Ronan’s people. “Do not pretend outrage. You have all wanted Ian controlled for years. I was simply more honest about the method.”

That landed. It landed in the way Ronan’s wolves went quiet. It landed in the way Ronan’s face didn’t change, which somehow told me more than if he had denied it. It landed in the way Ian didn’t look at his pack.

God.

They had all feared him. They had all used him. They had all wanted the danger of him available, manageable, loyal, contained. Silas had not invented the cage. He had only added a lock and called it strategy.

Then I turned my head and looked at Ian. His eyes met mine, and there it was. All the hiding he had been doing. All the calm he had pushed at me in the room. All the careful little half-truths. He had not been hiding because he didn’t trust me. He had been hiding because whatever Silas was saying had gone into him like a knife, and he had decided I could not afford to bleed with him.

Pain crossed his face when he saw that I knew.

Silas said, “Then you fell into the circle. Wrong woman. Wrong blood. Wrong body holding the line. A leash tied to an errant human.”

The word leash snapped through the courtyard again.

Something in me went very still.

I had spent most of my life being expected to make other people comfortable with what they had done to me. Smile here. Sit there. Be gracious. Don’t embarrass your sister. Don’t make things hard for your father. Don’t make the wedding awkward. Don’t act like your ex marrying your sister is anything except one of those complicated family things everyone whispers around and expects the woman in the middle to survive quietly.

Now a supernatural war criminal in a very expensive coat was standing in the rain calling me a leash because that was easier than admitting he had tried to enslave a man and accidentally caught a woman in the machinery.

No.

Absolutely not.

“Stop,” Ian said.

Silas looked at him. “Or what? You will kill me in front of every human witness here? You will shift and prove what every pack already fears? Please do.”

My father shouted, “What is he talking about? What are you people?”

A Thorne wolf grabbed him by the shoulder. My body jerked forward on pure instinct. Sava was suddenly closer to my side, her hand hovering near my back.

Silas looked at my family as if they were seated in a theater and he had decided to be generous with the program notes.

“They have not told you? How rude.”

“Silas,” Ronan warned.

“They are wolves,” Silas said.

The courtyard went so silent I heard the fountain.

My brain, which had apparently decided to handle trauma through practical filing systems, offered a terrible thought. Well, there goes the secrecy policy.

Grant made a strangled noise. “That’s insane.”

Henry barked harder, which felt like a strong argument for Henry being the smartest person here.

Silas smiled. “Yes. It usually sounds that way before the screaming starts.”