Page 99 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“May I?”

I nodded and Ian’s hands closed around the grips.

The hallway outside the suite was quiet. The two guards stepped away from the door as Ronan emerged first. They didn’t look at me directly. Yesterday that had felt like disgust. Today, after the map, after the gate, after the word missing, it felt like fear with better posture. They knew something had shifted. I was no longer only the human who had fallen into a forbidden rite. I was the human who had survived it.

And now I was being wheeled through their side of the resort to show their Alpha where the breach had opened.

The service lift took us two floors and out through a rear corridor lined with stone, staff doors, and the faint smell of saltwater.

Outside, daylight struck hard. The east grounds looked different without moonlight and terror. Less like a nightmare and more like a place rich people would use for engagement photos if rich people knew the hedges were guarding ritual murder grass.

The air smelled impossibly alive. Flowers. Damp earth. Ocean. Sun-warmed stone.

And Ian.

That one I didn’t admit aloud.

He pushed the chair slowly over the path, adjusting before each uneven patch so the wheels didn’t jolt my shoulder. He never announced the movement. He simply took the gentler angle.

The black hedge appeared at the curve of the path and my stomach dropped.

Ian stopped before I spoke.

Sava came up beside me. “Pain?”

“No.”

Ronan turned. “Then what?”

I looked at the hedge. I could see it now. The gap near the service gate. The sign. The angle where Henry had vanished. The slope beyond. The memory came back too clean and my fingers gripped the chair arms.

Ian moved beside me. “Cassie.”

“This is it,” I said. “That gate.”

The gate looked harmless in daylight. That offended me. Tragedy should have the decency to leave teeth marks.

“The lock was not broken,” Lucien said. “The override came from this side.”

“So Brenner opened it,” I said.

“Or someone using Brenner’s access.”

Ronan glanced at Lucien. “The code?”

“Changed three hours before the rite.”

Ian’s hand tightened on the chair grip.

Ronan’s head turned slowly. “By whom?”

Lucien’s expression remained smooth, but something behind it had gone tense. “Council authorization. The request came through Elder Malrec’s office.”

The silence after that had weight.

Even I knew enough to understand Elder Malrec. Old man with a blade. The ‘kill her now before the mark roots’ guy.

Ronan stood.