Page 54 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“That is the same sentence with better diction.”

“Yes.”

Ian moved away from the wall.

His voice was low, but it changed the air. “Her family is not touched.”

Ronan turned his head. The two brothers looked at each other, and the room tightened so fast I forgot to breathe. There it was again. The thing beneath every word between them. Ronan, standing between the world and disaster. Ian, becoming the disaster if anyone moved too close to me.

To me.

A woman he didn’t know. A woman he had bitten. A woman his wolf had apparently filed under emergency possession while everyone else discussed whether I should be killed before lunch.

Ronan spoke carefully. “Then she stays quiet.”

Ian’s jaw flexed.

“I can speak for myself,” I said.

Both men looked at me. Good. I was on a bed, poisoned, half-dressed in medical gauze and ruined chiffon, but I was still in the room.

“Bring me my phone,” I said to Ronan. “I’ll text my father. You can stand there and brood over punctuation if it makes you feel powerful.”

Sava made a soft sound that might have been a cough.

Ronan didn’t blink. “You will send exactly what I approve.”

“No.”

“Cassie,” Ian said.

I looked at him and he stopped. Maybe he heard it. The warning in my name. The way saying it too gently from his mouth only made the cage prettier.

I shifted against the pillows, which turned out to be a mistake. Pain dragged hot fingers through my shoulder and down my ribs. For a few seconds, the room blurred. Ian took one step toward me, then stopped himself so violently I felt it.

I breathed until the walls steadied.

Then I looked back at Ronan. “I will not tell my father about werewolves. I will not tell him about your pack, your ceremony, your council, or the part where several of your people apparently voted on murdering me while I had a fever.”

Ronan held my gaze.

“But I will not text him some resort-approved nonsense that makes me sound drunk, stupid, or fragile,” I said. “My family already knows how to put me in that role without your help.”

Something shifted in Ian’s face. I kept going because stopping would make me feel the pain, and I had enough of that.

“My father gets to know I am awake. He gets to know I am angry. He gets to know I am being kept overnight because your physician is concerned about infection and concussion. He gets to know Henry is safe. He gets to know I love him. You do not get to take that part.”

The room went quiet.

Ronan looked at Sava. “Could that hold the father?”

“For a while,” Sava said. “It sounds more like a daughter than a brochure.”

He looked back at me. “No mention of locked doors. No mention of wolves. No mention of the bite.”

“You said infection.”

“A fall wound.”