Page 52 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

The room went silent. A small, ordinary sentence in the middle of old law, wolf magic, blood, and men deciding how to contain her.

My throat tightened. “I know.”

“I chased my sister’s stupid dog because she was crying.”

Her voice broke on the last word, but she held herself together through it.

Sava’s expression shifted first.

Ronan’s didn’t.

Mine must have, because Cassie looked away. She had not asked for pity. She would hate it if I gave it to her.

So I gave her the only thing I had that was not a lie.

“You should have been safe here.”

Her eyes closed again. Outside the door, wolves waited. Beyond them, humans waited. Between both, Ronan held the line because if it broke, he would lose his pack, his secrecy, or me.

Maybe all three.

Cassie Morgan had survived dawn.

No one in that room was foolish enough to call it a miracle.

Chapter 8:

Five-Star Captivity

Cassie

They moved me into a prison with ocean views.

That was the sort of detail a person noticed when her life had become too absurd for screaming to cover. Cream walls. Linen curtains. A king-sized bed made with white sheets tucked so tight they looked disciplinary. A sitting area with two chairs, a low table, and a bowl of pears arranged by someone who believed fruit could apologize for captivity.

There was no balcony.

I noticed that too.

The windows looked real until I watched Ronan touch a control panel near the door and lower the interior locks with a soft mechanical sound. The glass remained clear. The view remained beautiful. The message didn’t.

Look all you want.

You are not leaving.

Sava and another woman helped me into bed. The other woman had a nurse’s bag, a calm face, and the professional blankness of someone trained not to react when a half-dead human in a torn bridesmaid dress got wheeled through a private service corridor by a werewolf king and his brother with anger management issues.

Not king.

Alpha.

Apparently, there were distinctions. I didn’t yet care about any of them.

Ian stood near the wall while they settled me. He had put on a black shirt at some point, though it didn’t do a thing to make him look less like the reason a locked door existed. He kept his hands at his sides and his eyes away from my body unless the monitor beside the bed changed rhythm.

Every time it did, he looked. Every time he looked, I hated that some stupid, poisoned part of me calmed.

The bite throbbed under the bandage Sava had wrapped across my shoulder and chest. It was not the same pain as before. Before, the mark had burned through me in waves, black and cold and alive. Now it sat deeper, less frantic, as if it had survived the night and decided to unpack.