Page 49 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

His gaze shifted to Cassie. That silence was answer enough. After, he would solve the witness. After, when the mark weakened. After, when I could be pulled away without bringing the building down around us. After, when Cassie Morgan became one human woman against the survival of every wolf under Ronan’s care.

My wolf understood enough to hate him. The man understood enough to hate that he might be right.

“No,” I said.

Ronan looked back at me. “No what?”

“No decision about her without me in the room.”

“You are not fit to judge this.”

“I am the only reason she is alive.”

“You are the reason she is dying.”

I had no defense.

Cassie stirred. Her lashes moved against fever-bruised skin. Her mouth parted, and a weak breath pulled through her. Sava leaned over her, checking the line in her arm, but Cassie’s eyes opened before the doctor touched her.

She stared at the ceiling first, then her gaze found me. Fear entered her scent.

I hated that I could smell it.

Her eyes shifted to Ronan, then to the door behind him. She understood rooms. She understood men blocking doors. She understood power deciding how much truth she deserved. Even half-conscious, she read the danger.

“Am I dead?” she whispered.

Sava answered. “No.”

Cassie blinked slowly. “Feels rude to be unsure.”

The words cost her. I could hear it in the scrape of them.

Ronan came to the foot of the bed.

“Cassie Morgan,” he said. “You survived dawn.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Was I not supposed to?”

“No.”

The answer didn’t soften. Her face changed, not dramatically, not the way humans performed shock when they wanted witnesses. Her eyes went still. She absorbed the fact and placed it somewhere inside herself, beside the bite, the wolf, the locked door, and whatever life she now understood she might not return to.

“My father,” she said.

“He has been told you are under medical care.”

“That means he doesn’t know anything.”

“It means he knows enough to stay on the west side.”

A thread of anger moved through her exhaustion. “He won’t.”

“No,” Ronan said. “He will not. That is why my people are handling him carefully.”

“My people,” she repeated.

Her gaze moved to me. She tried to move her hand toward her shoulder. Pain took her before she reached the bandage. Her face went white, and her back arched off the bed.