Page 237 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Ian was staring at me. His eyes were still gold. His body was still huge, dark, and blood-soaked. His teeth were still bared enough to make any sane woman reconsider her life choices.

But he was there.

Ian was there.

I stepped toward him and put my hand on his muzzle.

“There you are,” I whispered.

His body shuddered. The bond glowed between us, no longer a hook, no longer a tear, no longer that ugly word Silas had put in everyone’s mouth. It felt warm. Terrifying. Whole.

Ours.

“I love you,” I said.

The wolf went completely still.

“And yes, I know how insane that sounds. I am the human woman saying it to a giant wolf in a murder courtyard while my shoulder is glowing like a haunted night-light. I am very aware.”

A sound moved through him.

“I love you,” I said again, softer, because the second time was for him. “I couldn’t let you sacrifice yourself one more time. Not for me. Not because of me. If that means dying here, then fine. It has been a deeply unreasonable week.”

His ears lowered.

My heart cracked.

“So come back,” I said. “Because if I am going to die, I would like the goodbye kiss you were too much of a coward to give me.”

Ian

For a moment, I didn’t understand the words.

The wolf understood threat. Blood. Movement. The shape of Ronan’s wolves beyond Cassie’s shoulder. The path to the service arch. The rain thinning the scents of the dead. The sound of heartbeats too close to the route she should have taken.

Cassie had come back.

That fact moved through the wolf as danger before it moved through me as miracle.

She should have been gone. She should have been in the car with her family, with the road opening ahead of her and Sava beside her, alive because I had given what was left of myself to make the pack look at me instead. I had built the last of my purpose around that image. Cassie away from this place. Cassie beyond Ronan’s reach, beyond the council’s vote, beyond Silas’s dead hand and Evelyn’s laughing mouth.

Then she threw her injured body into mine and broke that purpose with the force of a woman who had never once accepted being handled when she was angry enough to stand.

The wolf had spun on her. I felt the snarl in my throat. Felt the heat of her blood through the rain. Felt the pull to cage her, guard her, force her behind me where teeth could not reach.

Then her hand cracked across my muzzle.

The sound cut through the courtyard. It cut through the wolf. It reached the place in me I had tried to bury.

Cassie stood in front of me, shaking with pain and fury, and called me an idiot as if I were not a beast covered in blood. As if I were not the thing every wolf in that courtyard had feared I would become. As if some part of me was still a man worth yelling at.

I held on to that.

Barely.

Her voice came in pieces at first. The wolf caught tone more than meaning. Anger. Terror. Love turned sharp because I had tried to make grief look noble.

Then the words began to settle.