Page 241 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Cassie, still braced against me, muttered, “Some taken.”

Cormac nodded. “And Grant can be threatened into silence. He looks threatenable.”

A voice shouted from beyond the service arch. “Excuse me?”

Cassie went rigid in my arms. I turned my head.

The wedding party burst into the courtyard.

They came armed with broken furniture and champagne bottles, wild-eyed and soaked through from the rain. Cassie’s father led them with a bottle gripped by the neck. Tessa followed with a broken chair leg in both hands. Cassie’s mother carried a heavy serving tray like a shield. Aunt Linda had found a candelabra somewhere. Grant trailed behind them with a chair leg held as if he distrusted the physics of it.

They stopped all at once.

The courtyard answered their courage with the truth of what had happened there. Blood on white stone. Bodies in the rain. Wolves half shifted and watching. Silas ruined in the broken fountain. Sava with her blade. Cormac bleeding beside her. Ronan standing like judgment in a blood-soaked coat.

And Cassie in my arms, her sweater pulled from one shoulder, the mark exposed, with me naked and blood-covered around her.

No one spoke.

Aunt Linda looked me up and down with the bleak composure of a woman whose fear had been forced to make room for appraisal.

“Well,” she said.

Cassie’s mother hissed, “Linda.”

“I am under supernatural stress, Marianne.”

Henry broke through their legs like a small, furious missile.

“Tessa screamed, “Henry, no.”

Henry ignored her, crossed the blood-slick stone at full speed, and bit the nearest unshifted wolf on the ankle.

The wolf yelped. The sound was so ordinary, so offended and undignified, that it broke something in the air none of us had been able to touch.

Henry barked once and planted himself in front of Cassie and me as if the matter had been handled.

Cassie looked down at him. “Good boy.”

His whole body wagged.

Cormac made a pained sound that might have been laughter. “I amend my recommendation. The dog should be added to the council.”

Aunt Linda lifted the candelabra. “I second.”

Ronan closed his eyes for one brief moment. When he opened them, he looked at me. For the first time since I had walked out of Evelyn’s holding room, I didn’t see only an Alpha measuring risk. I saw my brother looking at the place where he had nearly lost me.

“Is it truly a mate bond?” he asked.

The courtyard waited. I looked down at Cassie first. Her hand rested over my chest. Her body trembled with exhaustion, but the bond between us was steady. She felt my fear and didn’t turn from it. She felt my love and didn’t ask me to make it easier for anyone watching.

I covered the exposed mark on her shoulder with one hand, shielding the raw skin from the rain, then I looked back at Ronan.

“Yes,” I said.

My voice was rough from the shift, from grief, from the place I had nearly stayed forever.

“It is real. It has always been real. That is what I have been trying to tell you.”