Page 222 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Ronan’s command thundered across the courtyard, ordering his wolves forward. Silas shouted something I didn’t understand, and men became wolves all around us.

There was no graceful moonlit shift. No mystical shimmer. No elegant paranormal nonsense. There was bone and wet tearing sound and bodies collapsing forward into shapes too large and too fast. Clothes split. Teeth flashed. Fur slicked dark under rain. Human weapons fell useless to the paving stones as wolves crashed into one another with a force that shook the air.

A black wolf hit a Thorne man so hard they rolled into the overturned chairs and came up in a spray of broken wood. Cormac shifted halfway near the service arch, his face lengthening enough to become something that smiled with too many teeth before he slammed two Thorne wolves into the hedge.

Tessa screamed my name. Dad cursed in a voice so raw it cut through even the snarling.

Sava grabbed me from behind. “Move!”

I fought her. “Ian!”

He turned and for one second, through rain, blood, and bodies changing shape around us, I saw him clearly.

Not the weapon. Not the leash. Not the cursed wrong bond or whatever Silas had tried to name us.

Ian.

His eyes went gold.

“Run,” he snarled.

I flinched. I hated that I flinched. He hated it too. I saw that before he turned away and hit another Thorne wolf coming over the fountain wall toward my family.

Sava hauled me backward. “You can be furious while moving.”

“My family!”

“That is where I am taking you.”

A wolf slammed into the stones in front of us. I screamed despite every intention not to. Sava shoved me behind her and drew a blade from somewhere under her coat.

It was not a knife. It was a short, curved silver blade, and the wolf knew it.

He lunged anyway. Sava met him like a woman who had been waiting her entire life for someone to underestimate the doctor. She stepped inside the arc of his claws and slashed upward across his muzzle. The blade smoked where it cut. The wolf howled, recoiling, and Sava kicked him in the knee hard enough to make the joint bend wrong.

I stared at her.

She grabbed my sleeve. “Admire me later.”

We ducked around the fountain.

My hip screamed with every step. The stitches pulled hot and wet under my sweater. I could smell blood, which was alarming because two weeks ago I could not smell much beyond coffee, shampoo, and whether a man had put on too much cologne to cover guilt.

Now I could smell rain, blood, wet fur, silver, terror, and Ian.

Ian was everywhere.

Not physically. I could not always see him. The courtyard was too chaotic, too violent, too crowded with bodies hitting bodies. But the bond, or binding, or whatever bastard thing had been tied between us, kept pulling my awareness toward him.

He was rage. He was grief. He was pulling away from me one strand at a time.

No.

I stumbled.

Sava caught me. “Cassie.”

“He’s doing something.”