Page 61 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Neither of us looked at her.

Ronan’s face was hard. “If you are this far gone by morning, what happens when she wakes and asks you to open the door?”

“She will not get far if the mark is still unstable.”

“That is not what I asked.”

I said nothing. Because I saw it too. Cassie standing in front of a locked door, fever-bright and furious. My brother ordering her kept inside, guards moving to restrain her. The wolf rising with one simple answer for anyone between her body and a choice she wanted.

Mine to protect. Mine to free. Mine.

I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum as if the pressure could hold the beast down.

“She is afraid of cages,” I said.

Ronan’s expression shifted. “You know that after one night?”

“I know it because she told us without saying it.”

“You are building loyalty out of fragments.”

“She is a person made of fragments you keep stepping over.”

Ronan’s eyes darkened. “Careful.”

Cassie flinched in sleep and I stepped back at once.

Sava crossed to the monitor and checked the readings. “Enough. Both of you lower your voices or leave my patient to die in peace, since apparently that was everyone’s first plan anyway.”

Ronan’s attention moved to her. “You think I want her dead?”

“I think you want the cleanest survivable outcome, and I think if the cleanest survivable outcome involves her dying after Ian can be made safe, you will call it tragedy and sleep easily.”

The room held still. Sava had been physician to the Holloways long enough to say things that would have earned another wolf a broken face.

Ronan didn’t deny it.

My wolf didn’t understand the restraint that kept me in place but the man did.

Ronan was Alpha. A witness who could expose us threatened the pack. A human carrying my mark threatened pack law. A woman my wolf might choose over our own blood threatened Ronan’s rule before any council member had to say it aloud. He had no reason to care for Cassie beyond what killing her might cost him.

That should have made him simpler to hate, but it didn’t. Because Ronan was standing at the door, and no one had come through it.

“What I want,” he said, “is my brother sane, my pack hidden, and this woman alive long enough for Sava to find a way to separate those outcomes.”

“And after?” I asked.

Ronan’s gaze came back to me, but he didn’t answer.

Sava’s mouth tightened. “I am a doctor, Ronan.”

“You are pack.”

“I am both.”

“Then understand what happens if she walks out of here with what she knows.”

Sava looked at Cassie. “I understand better than you think.”