Page 80 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“Wonderful. I’m glad the scientific method survived my dignity.”

Sava’s mouth barely moved. “Your dignity is doing surprisingly well, considering.”

A soft moment almost happened there. Small and uninvited. The sort of thing that could have become warmth if there were fewer locks on the door.

Then Ronan ruined it by being Ronan. “Can she feel his thoughts?”

“No,” I said.

Sava looked at me. “Are you certain?”

“I am not getting words. I am getting feelings I didn’t order.”

Ian’s jaw tightened.

“Guilt,” I said, because I was too tired to be generous. “Anger. Something that feels like being trapped inside a fist. And the wolf. I think.”

The last two words came out quieter than I wanted.

Ian took one step toward me and the bite cooled, my body easing up so sharply I hated him for it.

Sava noticed. “Stop there.”

Ronan looked from Ian to me, measuring the space. “So that is the current threshold.”

Sava made a note. “Current is doing work. She is changing by the hour.”

“Changing how?”

“The mark is no longer only attacking. It is adapting.”

I looked at her. “Please define adapting in a way that does not make me want to peel my skin off.”

“I cannot promise that.”

“Try.”

Sava set down her pen. “Last night, the mark behaved like venom because your body had no wolf magic to receive it. This morning, it remained concentrated around the bite, with flares during pain and stress. Now it is responding to proximity, emotion, and your awareness of Ian.”

“My awareness of Ian,” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“That sounds intimate.”

“It is.”

I didn’t look at him, I knew it was childish, but I still didn’t look.

Ian’s voice came low from across the room. “It should not be happening this fast.”

Sava nodded. “No.”

Ronan’s face darkened. “Then we keep pushing.”

Ian turned on him. “No. She is exhausted.”

“She is a breach connected to you by an unstable mark that may root deeper every hour we fail to understand it.”