Page 43 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Ian looked down at me. I had not meant to say it. I didn’t know whether I was asking him not to kill them or not to leave me. Fever made honesty sloppy.

His eyes searched mine.

“I am here,” he said.

“You bit me.”

“Yes.”

“You’re the reason they want me dead.”

“Yes.”

“You’re also the reason they haven’t done it.”

His mouth tightened. “Yes.”

“That is very inconvenient for my anger.”

A rough breath left him. It might have been pain. It might have been the remains of a laugh that didn’t know how to live in his body.

I closed my eyes again.

The fever rolled higher. At some point, I stopped knowing whether Ian’s hand was on my shoulder or inside my bones. The pain became weather. Heat, ice, black lightning under my skin. My body twisted against it until Sava and Ian held me down, one with medicine, one with the unbearable steadiness of his touch.

I heard Ronan again near the door. “How long?”

Sava answered from very far away. “If she follows every known rule, dawn kills her.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then your known rules are wrong.”

Silence.

Then Ronan, colder than before. “No one enters this room before sunrise without my order.”

“And the council?”

“If they want to test my brother tonight, they can do it over my dead body.”

That sounded noble. It was not. I understood him even through the fever. Ronan was not guarding me because I mattered, he was guarding the locked door to a disaster.

The mark pulsed and my eyes flew open. Then Ian was there, leaning over me.

“Cassie.”

My name in his mouth did something to the pain. Softened it.

No. Not softened. Focused it.

I hated that most of all.

“Don’t say it like you own it,” I whispered.

His face went still, then he nodded once. “I do not own anything of yours.”

My eyes burned, which was embarrassing, because I had managed not to cry when my sister stole my boyfriend and apparently a supernatural murder council was what finally made me sentimental.