Page 25 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

I sat back on my knees. Grass stuck to my palms. My dress had ripped along one side. My hair had fallen across my face. My left foot was bleeding from a scrape I had not felt until that moment.

“Sorry,” I said, because apparently my survival instincts had chosen etiquette. “My sister’s dog got loose.”

No one moved.

That was when I noticed the ash. A pale line curved through the grass beneath my knees, part of a larger pattern drawn across the lawn. Symbols had been marked inside the circle. At the northern end stood an altar or table of black stone with a silver basin resting on top.

A private family ceremony, Mara had said.

Wonderful. I had interrupted rich people religion.

“I know this looks bad,” I said, trying to stand and failing when my skirt tangled around my legs. “Actually, it looks terrible. I see that. I’m going to get the dog and leave, and you can all go back to whatever extremely private, very atmospheric thing this is.”

A man near the altar stepped forward. He was old. Very old. White hair, sharp face, hands stained with ash. His eyes fixed on the place where my knee had smeared the line.

“You broke the circle,” he said.

His voice was quiet but the words moved through the lawn anyway, and a murmur rose around me.

I held up both hands. “I broke your hedge first, technically, so if we’re making a list, start there.”

No one laughed.

Tough crowd.

Then Henry barked again and lunged toward me, yanking at the leash until the flowers on his collar shook. I reached for him, but a woman in white stepped into my path. She was beautiful in a cold, expensive way. Pale hair braided down her back. Bare arms. A simple white dress that looked ceremonial enough to make my ripped chiffon feel underdressed for the wrong disaster. Her eyes dropped to my hands, then to my throat, then to the bloody scrape on my foot.

I followed her gaze and saw the blood had touched one of the ash lines.

“Oh,” I said. “That probably matters.”

The old man’s head snapped toward someone across the circle. “Get her out.”

Several people moved at once.

Fast.

Too fast.

The kind of fast my brain refused to organize at first. One second, they stood along the edge of the lawn. The next, three men were coming toward me across the grass with their eyes fixed, shoulders low, mouths tight. Every nerve in my body finally caught up.

“Do not touch me!”

My voice cracked at the end.

I hated that.

One of the men reached for my arm and Henry lost his mind. He lunged, snarling with a ferocity his body had no right to contain, and the leash snapped taut around the post. The man barely glanced at him. His hand kept coming.

Then a growl rolled across the circle and the man stopped. Actually, everyone stopped. The sound had not come from Henry.

I turned my head.

There was a man on the far side of the circle. I had seen him before without seeing him. He had been part of the ring of figures, one more dark shape in the moonlight. Now my eyes found him and could not make sense of what they were seeing.

He was huge.

That was the first plain truth my mind could hold. Tall, broad, built with the kind of strength no gym had softened into decoration. His shirt was open at the throat, sleeves rolled to the elbows, forearms marked with scars and old ink. His hair was black, his jaw rough with stubble, and his eyes were fixed on me with a focus so complete it felt physical.