Chapter 9 A Conflict of Interest
A Conflict of Interest
Ian
Cassie fell asleep with her hand curled near the edge of the blanket, her fingers empty where the phone had been.
I watched that hand until Ronan noticed.
“She cannot have the phone again,” he said.
“She asked for one thing that belonged to her.”
“And if she wakes confused, calls her father, and tells him the truth before anyone stops her?”
“She will not.”
Ronan looked at me then, and the full weight of the Alpha settled into the space between us. “You do not know that.”
No. I didn’t. I knew the scent of her fear.
I knew the way pain moved through her body before the monitor caught it.
I knew the mark quieted when my hand was near her and flared when I let my wolf too close to the surface.
I knew she hated needing anything from me, and I knew she had still put her fingers in my palm because survival had left her no clean choices.
I didn’t know what she would do with a phone, a locked room, and a father waiting on the other side of the resort.
The wolf didn’t care. The wolf knew only that she had asked.
“She should have it,” I said.
Sava stopped packing her medical bag.
Ronan’s gaze stayed on me. “Listen to yourself.”
“I am.”
“No. You are listening to him.”
My jaw tightened as Ronan stepped closer to the bed, close enough that my wolf rose in warning, which proved my brother’s point before he made it.
He looked down at Cassie. Her face was turned slightly toward me in sleep, not by choice, not knowingly.
The mark had oriented her body toward mine the way plants leaned toward sun.
That truth made something ugly move beneath my ribs.
Ronan saw that too.
“You are defending her phone,” he said quietly. “Her dog. Her father’s feelings. Her anger. Her right to hate you. Every small thing she claims, your wolf wants guarded as if the pack is trying to take meat from his mouth.”
My hands closed so hard my knuckles cracked.
Sava said, “Do not make me sedate both of you.”
Neither of us looked at her.
Ronan’s face was hard. “If you are this far gone by morning, what happens when she wakes and asks you to open the door?”
“She will not get far if the mark is still unstable.”
“That is not what I asked.”
I said nothing. Because I saw it too. Cassie standing in front of a locked door, fever-bright and furious. My brother ordering her kept inside, guards moving to restrain her. The wolf rising with one simple answer for anyone between her body and a choice she wanted.
Mine to protect. Mine to free. Mine.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum as if the pressure could hold the beast down.
“She is afraid of cages,” I said.
Ronan’s expression shifted. “You know that after one night?”
“I know it because she told us without saying it.”
“You are building loyalty out of fragments.”
“She is a person made of fragments you keep stepping over.”
Ronan’s eyes darkened. “Careful.”
Cassie flinched in sleep and I stepped back at once.
Sava crossed to the monitor and checked the readings. “Enough. Both of you lower your voices or leave my patient to die in peace, since apparently that was everyone’s first plan anyway.”
Ronan’s attention moved to her. “You think I want her dead?”
“I think you want the cleanest survivable outcome, and I think if the cleanest survivable outcome involves her dying after Ian can be made safe, you will call it tragedy and sleep easily.”
The room held still. Sava had been physician to the Holloways long enough to say things that would have earned another wolf a broken face.
Ronan didn’t deny it.
My wolf didn’t understand the restraint that kept me in place but the man did.
Ronan was Alpha. A witness who could expose us threatened the pack.
A human carrying my mark threatened pack law.
A woman my wolf might choose over our own blood threatened Ronan’s rule before any council member had to say it aloud.
He had no reason to care for Cassie beyond what killing her might cost him.
That should have made him simpler to hate, but it didn’t. Because Ronan was standing at the door, and no one had come through it.
“What I want,” he said, “is my brother sane, my pack hidden, and this woman alive long enough for Sava to find a way to separate those outcomes.”
“And after?” I asked.
Ronan’s gaze came back to me, but he didn’t answer.
Sava’s mouth tightened. “I am a doctor, Ronan.”
“You are pack.”
“I am both.”
“Then understand what happens if she walks out of here with what she knows.”
Sava looked at Cassie. “I understand better than you think.”
Ronan lowered his voice. “Can the mark be reversed before the full moon?”
The full moon. The words entered my blood like silver.
Cassie had seven days before the bond, if it was a bond, became permanent. Seven days before law, instinct, and old magic stopped treating what I had done as unfinished. Seven days before undoing it became something even wolves didn’t survive cleanly.
If she lived that long.
Sava didn’t answer quickly.
“I have seen a rejected mark burn out before the first moon,” she said. “Between wolves. Rarely. Painfully. Usually when the bite was shallow or the claimed party’s wolf refused the bond.”
“She has no wolf though.” Ronan pointed out.
“I am aware.”
“Then what refuses it?”
Sava looked at me. “She does.”
The wolf hated that answer but I held him silent.
Ronan considered it. “Her will against his mark.”
“Against the magic, yes.”
“Can that weaken it?”
“It may already be part of why she survived.”
No one spoke.
Sava continued, more quietly. “A human body should have failed before dawn. Hers fought. The mark adapted, but it didn’t conquer her as quickly as it should have. There may be a way to support her body while the magic exhausts itself.”
Ronan’s eyes sharpened. “Distance?”
“Eventually. Carefully. Not today.”
“Medicine?”
“To keep her alive, yes. To break wolf magic, no.”
“Ritual?”
Sava’s gaze cooled. “Ask the elders if you want old words and knives. Ask me if you want her breathing at the end of the hour.”
Ronan accepted that because he needed her more than pride. “Then keep her breathing.”
“I intend to.”
“Find out what weakens the mark without triggering him.”
Sava looked at me. “And if nothing does?”
Ronan said nothing.
I looked down at Cassie. She slept as if sleep had been forced on her rather than chosen.
Her brow was faintly drawn. The bandage crossed her shoulder and disappeared beneath the sheet.
She should have been with her father, fighting with her mother, warning her sister about the man she was about to marry, hating the color of her dress in a room that belonged to her.
Instead, she was here.
Because of me. Because my wolf had taken one breath and found the thing every law said could not exist inside human skin.
“I will not let you dispose of her,” I said.
Sava went still but Ronan didn’t. The door behind him felt suddenly farther away, as if the room had stretched to fit the size of the threat I had just made.
“You do not have the authority to stop me if pack survival requires it,” Ronan said.
I met his eyes. “I have the ability.”
A muscle moved in his jaw. The truth stood between us again. Ronan could command the pack. He could order guards. He could use law, council, secrecy, and every old oath I had made to him. But if I chose to put my body between Cassie and death, ability became the only language that mattered.
“You would turn on your Alpha for a human woman you met last night,” he said.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I would turn on anyone who tried to kill a helpless woman because my mistake made her inconvenient.”
That was true. It was not the whole truth.
Ronan knew it. My wolf knew it.
Cassie shifted beneath the sheet, and her lips parted around a rough breath. All three of us looked at her. For several seconds, the only sound in the room was the monitor and the sea wind pressing against sealed glass.
Ronan spoke without taking his eyes off her. “Then do not make her inconvenient.”
He turned toward the door and opened it.
The hallway outside went silent so fast it might have been waiting on the other side of his palm.
I smelled six wolves. Maybe more beyond the bend.
Malrec was not there now, but Cormac was.
Two young guards. A council messenger. Lucien farther away, carrying human coffee, human nerves, and the perfume of Cassie’s mother on his sleeve.
Ronan stepped into the threshold.
“Cassie Morgan remains under medical care,” he said to the hall.
“No council access until I call for it. No speculation near this door. No mention of mercy, execution, containment, or the full moon within hearing. Anyone who tests my patience today will find out whether I have more of it than my brother.”
He closed the door before anyone answered.
Sava gave him a flat look. “That last part was subtle.”
“They needed subtlety?”
“No. They needed tranquilizers.”
Ronan ignored that and crossed to the table near the window, where the nurse had left a tray of water, medicine, folded cloths, and Cassie’s sealed belongings.
He picked up her phone again.
My wolf didn’t like his hand on it.
Ronan noticed without looking at me. “You are going to survive me holding a phone.”
“I make no promises.”
His gaze flicked up. For the first time since dawn, there was almost humor in his face, but it disappeared quickly.
“Her father sent another message,” he said.
“What does it say?”
Ronan looked at the screen. “It says, ‘Paprika received. I am staying. Your aunt is being Linda. Blink twice if I need to commit a felony.’”
Sava’s mouth twitched despite herself.
I looked at Cassie. “She will want to answer.”
“Yes,” Ronan said. “And she will, when she can do it without telling him she is locked in a room with wolves.”
“She already knows not to tell him.”
“She knows while awake. Pain changes judgment. Fear changes judgment. You of all people should understand that.”
I did. That was why the words cut.