Page 37 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

The relief made me dizzy. Or maybe everything made me dizzy?

I opened my eyes again. Ian was watching me now. That was worse than the monitor. Worse than the pain, almost. There was too much focus in him. Too much control wrapped around something that wanted out. Men had looked at me with want before. Men had looked at me with anger. Grant had looked at me with both often enough that I knew the difference.

Ian looked at me as if moving one inch closer required a moral argument with his own bones.

I remembered the wolf above me. His breath at my throat. The hesitation before the bite and the pain after. My body knew it too. The memory ran through me and the black lines under my skin pulsed.

Ian’s hand tightened once on the blanket.

I stared at him. “What did you do to me?”

“A mate mark.”

I blinked at him. I had expected many insane answers. Hallucinogen. Animal attack. Cult sacrifice gone wrong. Wealthy people with bad boundaries. Even rabies had made a brief, fevered appearance somewhere in my list.

Mate mark didn’t help.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “A what?”

He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “A bite carrying wolf magic.”

“Wolf…magic.”

“Yes.”

I stared at the ceiling because looking at him while he said those words made them worse. “Right. Of course. Naturally. Why would it be a normal bite from a normal giant wolf? That would be tacky.”

He said nothing.

I looked back at him. “You understand how you sound.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re sticking with wolf magic.”

“Yes.”

“Great.”

A tremor moved through my body. My teeth clicked together before I could stop them. Ian’s hand shifted again, and the heat of him settled deeper into my nerves. The tremor eased.

I hated that too.

“You’re doing that,” I said.

“The mark reacts to me.”

“The mark can go to hell.”

His mouth tightened. “I agree.”

That startled me enough to focus. I searched his face for something that made sense. Cruelty would have helped. Satisfaction. Possessiveness. A smirk. Some sign that the monster had a familiar shape.

There was none. He looked like a man sitting beside a house he had burned down with people still inside.

“Am I dying?” I asked.

For the first time, Ian looked away.