Page 29 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

I hit him before his fingers touched her dress.

My shoulder drove into his chest. Bone gave. He flew backward through the ash line and struck the grass hard enough to dig a furrow.

Someone shouted my name. I didn’t care who.

A second wolf moved on my left. Older. Holloway blood. One of ours, which should have mattered.

It didn’t. My snarl stopped him three paces away. He looked at my mouth, at the blood dripping from it, at the woman collapsed between my forelegs, and finally understood the simplest rule in the circle.

No one came near her and kept the hand.

The human dog whimpered beside the stone post, still tangled in the pink leash she had held on to while I ruined her life. It shook so badly the little silk flowers on its collar trembled. I should have ignored it. My wolf didn’t.

The dog was hers because she had chosen it under fear. That made it mine to protect until she woke and took it back. I shifted my weight, putting my body between the dog, the woman, and the pack.

The lawn fell silent.

Then Evelyn said, “No.”

One word. Small. Cracked at the edges. I turned my head toward her. She stood inside the broken ring with both hands pressed to her stomach, her white dress untouched by blood, her eyes locked on the mark spreading across the human’s shoulder.

There was shock in her face.

There was grief.

There was also fear deep enough that my wolf noticed and filed it away.

Malrec stepped forward with the blade still in his hand. Blood from his own palm ran down the hilt and dripped onto the grass.

“Hold him,” he ordered.

No one moved.

Good.

Some wolves still had survival instincts.

Malrec’s mouth thinned. “The human has been marked inside a corrupted circle. If the line sets, the rite will be contaminated beyond recall. Kill her now, and the bond may burn out before it roots.”

The word kill left his mouth, and the world went red. I lunged but Ronan moved first. My brother crossed the circle between one breath and the next, putting himself in front of Malrec with his hand raised, palm out, Alpha power rolling from him hard enough to bend every wolf on the lawn except me.

“Ian.”

His voice struck through the blood haze.

I stopped because it was Ronan. I stopped because he was my brother. I stopped because the part of me that still knew consequence understood that if I went through him to reach Malrec, the pack would fracture before the human bled out.

My claws tore trenches into the grass.

Ronan held my stare. His eyes were dark, hard, and furious. There was fear beneath it, buried where an Alpha could not afford to let anyone see.

He knew. The others were starting to understand, but Ronan had known me since we were boys fighting over meat at our father’s table, and he had watched my wolf tear men apart without ever confusing hunger for claiming.

This was different.

“Shift back,” he said.

I couldn’t.