Chapter 8 Five-Star Captivity #2
He read the message without expression. “Paprika?”
“My parents are divorced because of spice organization. It’s a whole thing.”
He looked at me for a moment, as if deciding whether fever had damaged my brain in a way Sava had missed.
Then he said, “Send it.”
I did.
The delivered mark appeared. For the first time since waking, something inside me loosened. Not enough to feel safe but enough to breathe.
My father replied less than thirty seconds later.
Dad: I love you. I am here. I am not leaving.
The room tilted and I held the phone tightly.
Ian made a sound so low I doubted anyone else heard it.
Ronan did.
“Enough,” he said.
I looked up. “No.”
“You have proof of contact. He has proof of life. That is enough for now.”
“For you.”
“Yes.”
He took the phone before I could stop him. My grip was too weak and that humiliation burned almost as much as the bite.
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered.
Ian moved.
Ronan looked at him. “Do not.”
Ian stopped, but his defiance was clear on his face.
My pulse began to race and the monitor betrayed me at once.
Sava stepped between them. “Both of you are going to make my patient stroke out because neither of you can stand not being the largest animal in the room.”
Ronan looked at her and Sava looked back without a flicker of fear.
After a moment, Ronan pocketed my phone. “The ceremony has been delayed.”
I went still. “What?”
“The wedding ceremony,” he said. “The resort has informed your party that, as a courtesy after a guest injury on our property, tomorrow’s wedding schedule will be postponed until your condition is clear.”
Tessa.
Grant.
The beach ceremony. The vows. The legal part.
Delayed. Not canceled, but delayed.
The thought moved through me slowly, through fever and pain and the strange, awful weight of the mark. My sister was not marrying him today. Because I had fallen through a hedge and been bitten by a werewolf.
There was probably no greeting card for that.
I stared at Ronan. “You delayed the wedding.”
“Yes.”
“As a courtesy.”
“Yes.”
“That is very thoughtful kidnapping.”
His mouth didn’t move. “It keeps the humans on property and reduces questions about your absence.”
Of course. There it was. Not kindness. Containment with centerpieces.
Still, something ugly and relieved loosened in my chest.
Grant didn’t get to marry her today.
Not yet.
Maybe that should not have mattered while I was poisoned in a locked room, but I had spent the last year learning that betrayal didn’t respect proportion. It grew where it wanted.
Ronan continued, “Your family has been told you are stable. Your father has been given the physician’s assurance through Lucien.”
I looked at Ian. He was watching me now, and the force of that attention made my skin heat under the fever.
“Did you know?” I asked.
His brows drew slightly. “About the wedding?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Would you have told me?”
“Yes.”
Ronan’s gaze cut to him.
Ian didn’t look away from me. “Yes.”
That answer should not have mattered either but it did. I hated how many things mattered when I was too weak to defend against them.
A knock came at the door and everyone turned toward it. Ronan opened the door only a hand’s width.
Lucien’s voice came through, quiet and controlled. “Her father received the text. He is calmer.”
“Good.”
“The groom is asking whether the postponement is medically necessary or simply precautionary.”
My mouth curled before I could stop it.
Of course Grant was worried about scheduling.
Ronan said, “Tell him medical necessity.”
“He may ask to speak with you directly.”
“Then he can wait.”
Lucien paused. “There is one more issue.”
Ronan’s face sharpened. “What?”
“The groom has been suggesting Ms. Morgan may have been drinking heavily before the fall. He says he is concerned about liability and her state of mind.”
My body went cold.
There it was. Grant, already building the story. Poor Cassie. Emotional Cassie. Unstable Cassie. Drunk Cassie, wandering where she should not have gone because she simply could not handle the wedding.
I pressed my lips together so hard they hurt.
Ian’s head turned slowly toward the door. Ronan looked back once.
“Stay here,” he said.
Ian’s eyes had gone gold. “Is he on the west side?”
“Yes,” Ronan said.
“Then he is still breathing because I am here.”
The statement was calm.
That made it worse.
My heartbeat kicked, and the monitor picked it up. Ian heard it. His eyes shut for one second, and when he opened them, they were dark again. Barely.
I forced words through my dry throat. “Do not kill Grant.”
Everyone looked at me.
I hated that those were the words available, but there we were.
Ian’s gaze fixed on mine. “He is making you unsafe.”
“He has been doing that for a while.”
The sentence slipped out before I could catch it.
Ian went very still. Ronan’s expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened in a way that made me wish I had said less.
Sava looked at my vitals instead of my face.
Coward. Kind coward, maybe, but still.
“Grant wants me to look unstable because then no one has to listen to me,” I said. “That is not a werewolf problem. That is just Grant.”
Ian’s jaw worked once.
Ronan turned back to the cracked door. “Lucien.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
“If Mr. Carrington raises concerns about Ms. Morgan’s drinking again, inform him that resort staff monitored all service at the dinner and will not support that claim. Remind him that any attempt to create a false liability narrative around an injured guest will be treated as interference.”
A pause, then Lucien said, “Understood.”
My throat tightened unexpectedly.
Ronan closed the door.
I stared at him. “Why would you do that?”
His eyes met mine. “Because his lie creates attention.”
Of course.
Still, the lie had been stopped, not for me, but stopped.
Sava finished adjusting the medication and checked the bandage. “You need sleep.”
“I need answers.”
“You need enough blood pressure to survive answers.”
“I dislike you less when you’re mean.”
“I am not mean. I am efficient with reality.” She stepped back and motioned to the nurse.
“We will let the sedative work. Ian, stay close but do not climb onto the bed and start acting heroic. Ronan, stop standing near the door as if you intend to fight the ocean. It raises the room’s blood pressure. ”
“No,” Ronan said.
Sava gave him a flat look. He ignored it and resumed his place by the door.
The nurse lowered the lights and the room softened, but nothing in it became safe.
I could feel the wolves beyond the door now. Not hear them, exactly. Not smell them. Nothing that made sense. It was more like pressure against the edge of a bruise. A knowing under the skin where the mark had put something new and unwelcome.
Ian stood beside the bed, not too close, but close enough. The mark settled into that distance with a quiet, traitorous relief.
“I’m not your mate,” I said.
The words came out before I knew I had chosen them. Ian’s face didn’t change, but something in his eyes did. Pain, maybe. Or restraint. With him, the two seemed to share a spine.
“No,” he said.
I expected the word to ease something.
It didn’t.
Because his mouth said no, but the room didn’t believe him. His body didn’t. The mark under my skin didn’t. The thing inside the bite pulsed once, slow and deep.
I closed my eyes against it. “I don’t belong to you.”
His voice came lower this time. “I know.”
“You don’t get to say that and then sit there looking like you’d rip the walls apart if someone touched me.”
Silence followed. When he answered, the words sounded dragged from somewhere he didn’t let people reach.
“I am trying not to.”
That was honest. Worse, it was the kind of honest I understood. Real.
The sedative began to pull at me, soft at the edges and heavy in the limbs. My body wanted sleep. My mind didn’t trust the room enough to give it.
I forced my eyes open one more time. Ronan stood at the door, the Alpha between me and the pack that wanted a cleaner solution.
Sava stood by the medicine cart, watching the monitors and the impossible mark with the sharp interest of a woman who had found a living exception to a dead rule.
Ian stood beside my bed, hands open, wolf buried badly beneath his skin.
And I lay there in the center of all of them, the human mistake everyone needed to manage.