Page 221 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Ronan stepped down one stair. “You break secrecy here, and every neutral pack turns on you.”

“I have broken nothing yet.” Silas lifted a hand. “All they have is words from a man under duress at a very dramatic wedding. Unless, of course, someone loses control.”

His eyes went to Ian and I felt it then. Not through magic. Through skin, blood, common sense. Silas wanted Ian to break. He wanted the monster everyone feared. He wanted teeth and bodies and the spectacle of Ronan losing control of his own brother in front of every wolf watching. He had taken my family because I was useful bait. He had told me the truth because my pain was meant to pull Ian apart.

I looked at Ian, and he looked back at me with something so calm in his face that fear went cold in my stomach.

He was too calm.

I knew that calm now. I had woken to it in the room. I had felt it pressed against me like a blanket that covered a wound but didn’t heal it.

It was goodbye.

“Ian,” I said quietly.

He stepped closer. For one heartbeat, I thought he might touch me. I wanted him to. I wanted his hand in mine, wanted to feel whatever was real under the poisoned magic and the old laws and the men explaining our bodies to us like they had discovered a useful lever.

Instead he lowered his voice. “Remember the plan.”

“No.”

“Stay close to Sava.”

“No.”

“When it breaks, take them and run.”

My throat tightened. “Ian.”

“Do not look back.”

I reached for him, but he stepped away. The hurt of that nearly folded me in half. Not because he rejected me. Because he wanted me to feel rejected enough to obey.

The bastard.

The beautiful, tragic, self-sacrificing, emotionally constipated bastard.

If he thought I was going to run away politely because he used his scary voice, he had learned absolutely nothing about me, a woman who had already had her patience murdered by family brunches, bad relationships, and werewolf court proceedings.

Then something moved near me. A Thorne wolf at the edge of the hostage line stepped forward. Young. Too eager. His eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with wanting to be part of history.

He shifted his grip on a knife.

Sava moved. Ian moved. The young wolf smiled.

And then his bones broke.

It was the worst sound I had ever heard. Until a second later, when his jaw split forward and his teeth pushed through his gums while his shoulders tore through his shirt. The knife hit the stone. Fur ripped along his spine. His fingers stretched into claws. His face stopped being a face.

The wedding party screamed.

I didn’t blame them. I froze for half a second because apparently seeing an actual werewolf transformation up close was enough to overload even my newly expanded disaster tolerance.

Then the wolf launched at me but Ian hit him midair. The impact cracked through the courtyard. Ian drove him into the stone, half man and half nightmare, his own body shifting in pieces as if rage had grabbed him from the inside and dragged the wolf up through his skin. The Thorne wolf snapped at his face.

Ian tore his throat out with one hand. Blood sprayed across the rain. Several humans started screaming louder, which felt fair.

Then the world broke open.