Page 62 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Ronan lowered his voice. “Can the mark be reversed before the full moon?”

The full moon. The words entered my blood like silver.

Cassie had seven days before the bond, if it was a bond, became permanent. Seven days before law, instinct, and old magic stopped treating what I had done as unfinished. Seven days before undoing it became something even wolves didn’t survive cleanly.

If she lived that long.

Sava didn’t answer quickly.

“I have seen a rejected mark burn out before the first moon,” she said. “Between wolves. Rarely. Painfully. Usually when the bite was shallow or the claimed party’s wolf refused the bond.”

“She has no wolf though.” Ronan pointed out.

“I am aware.”

“Then what refuses it?”

Sava looked at me. “She does.”

The wolf hated that answer but I held him silent.

Ronan considered it. “Her will against his mark.”

“Against the magic, yes.”

“Can that weaken it?”

“It may already be part of why she survived.”

No one spoke.

Sava continued, more quietly. “A human body should have failed before dawn. Hers fought. The mark adapted, but it didn’t conquer her as quickly as it should have. There may be a way to support her body while the magic exhausts itself.”

Ronan’s eyes sharpened. “Distance?”

“Eventually. Carefully. Not today.”

“Medicine?”

“To keep her alive, yes. To break wolf magic, no.”

“Ritual?”

Sava’s gaze cooled. “Ask the elders if you want old words and knives. Ask me if you want her breathing at the end of the hour.”

Ronan accepted that because he needed her more than pride. “Then keep her breathing.”

“I intend to.”

“Find out what weakens the mark without triggering him.”

Sava looked at me. “And if nothing does?”

Ronan said nothing.

I looked down at Cassie. She slept as if sleep had been forced on her rather than chosen. Her brow was faintly drawn. The bandage crossed her shoulder and disappeared beneath the sheet. She should have been with her father, fighting with her mother, warning her sister about the man she was about to marry, hating the color of her dress in a room that belonged to her.

Instead, she was here.