Page 70 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Dad leaned closer to the screen. “Cassie girl.”

I swallowed. My throat felt scraped raw.

“Hi, Dad.”

His face changed. He tried to hide it, but I knew him. Relief hit first, then fear again because relief had shown him how much he had been carrying.

“You with me?” he asked.

“I’m with you.”

“Paprika.”

Aunt Linda lifted her glass. “That spice has done more for this family than therapy.”

My mother made a wounded sound. “Linda, please.”

“What? I’m respecting the code word.”

Despite everything, despite the bandages, the locked room, the werewolf near the wall, and the Alpha by the door, I almost smiled.

“Hi, Aunt Linda.”

She leaned into the frame. “You look terrible, sweetheart.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s a compliment. Terrible means alive and under-medicated.”

Sava said from beside me, “She is adequately medicated.”

Aunt Linda’s eyes narrowed. “Who said that?”

“My doctor,” I said.

“Tell her I said you need more.”

“She heard you.”

“Good.”

Tessa cried harder.

The sound pulled me back to the screen.

“Cassie,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Henry got loose, and I should have held the leash, and you went after him because I asked you, and I thought you were just mad at me, but then you were gone and there was blood on the path and they wouldn’t let us see you.”

I closed my eyes for one second. Blood on the path. So they had given the humans enough truth to hurt and not enough to understand.

“Tess,” I said, opening my eyes again, “Henry is fine.”

“That is not the point.”

“It’s a point. He’s small. He needs all the points he can get.”

Her mouth crumpled.

I was too tired to hold her together. Too hurt. Too angry. Too aware that somewhere underneath her tears was the life she had built out of my wreckage.