Page 96 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“This is because if you can stand, you can identify the gate you found.”

“What gate?” I asked.

The door opened before she answered. Ronan walked in with Lucien behind him.

That was becoming a pattern. Information entered the room shortly before Ronan did, as if bad news respected hierarchy.

He wore dark trousers, a dark shirt, and the same expression he had worn since dawn yesterday, as if everyone alive had personally inconvenienced him by continuing to require management.

Lucien carried a tablet.

I was beginning to hate tablets. They were always attached to either bad news or supervised family calls.

Ronan looked at Sava first. “Can she move?”

“She can stand for short periods with assistance,” Sava said. “She should not be dragged through gardens while men with territory issues bark at each other.”

“I was not planning to drag her.”

“I was not speaking only to you.”

Ian’s gaze shifted toward her and Sava looked back without fear.

A tiny, exhausted part of me enjoyed that.

Ronan ignored both of them and turned to me. “You said the gate you followed the dog through was open.”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

I stared at him. “I was concussed after the wolf bite, not before.”

Ronan continued. “The east service gate should have been locked before the rite.”

“Congratulations. We have found one staff policy failure.”

Lucien’s expression didn’t change, but I was developing the impression that he collected reactions behind his eyes and filed them somewhere private.

Ronan nodded once to him.

Lucien set the tablet on the low table and turned it toward me. A map of the resort filled the screen. West terraces in pale gold. East grounds in gray. The hedge line between them marked in black. A thin red path curved from the rehearsal terrace toward the east gate, then down into the private grounds.

My route.

It looked too small. My life had apparently gone off a cliff in a distance the map treated as a brisk walk.

Ronan touched one point on the screen. “This gate opened from the east side at 8:39 p.m.”

I looked at him. “From the wolf side?”

“Yes.”

“And Henry went through later.”

“Yes.”

“Then nobody opened it for Henry.”