Page 35 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

My hand tightened on the table again and the metal groaned.

Sava ignored it. “The rest depends on the mark.”

“On me,” I said.

She looked at my hand on Cassie’s shoulder. “Yes.”

Cassie’s eyes opened. Unfocused. Fever-bright. Terrified. She looked at the ceiling first, then Sava, then Ronan, then the dog under the table. Lastly, she looked at me.

For one second, she didn’t understand. Then memory found her. Her body tried to recoil, but the pain stopped her. A broken sound left her. Her hand flew to her shoulder and met bandage, blood, heat.

“Henry,” she rasped.

Not help, not where am I.

The fucking dog.

Something in my chest tore hard enough that I almost stepped back. Instead, I lifted the leash slightly.

“He is here.”

Her gaze found the white dog under the table and Henry gave one miserable wag.

Cassie’s eyes moved back to me. Up close, they were not soft. Even glazed with fever, they had fight in them. Awareness. Fury gathering through pain.

Good. She would need it.

“What,” she whispered, each word dragged over broken glass, “the hell are you?”

No one breathed.

Ronan began to speak but I stopped him with a look. I owed her the first answer, even if it was the smallest one.

“My name is Ian.”

Her mouth trembled as a laugh tried to form and failed. “That was not the question.”

No. It was not.

The mark pulsed under my palm and her face twisted. I leaned closer before I thought better of it, because my body knew her pain before my mind permitted tenderness.

“I know,” I said.

Her eyes held mine and then rolled back. Her body convulsed on the table, hard enough that Sava swore and reached for a syringe. Ronan barked an order outside the room. The dog began barking again.

I kept my hand on Cassie’s shoulder while the mark burned black beneath her skin.

Mine, the wolf said.

No, I told him.

Not until she says it.

Chapter 6:

The Problem with Surviving

Cassie