Chapter 16 A Practical Exercise in Bad Ideas #2
All three doors closed and the corridor became too still. I waited for some dramatic tug in my shoulder, but nothing happened.
I frowned.
Ronan watched me. “Anything?”
“No.”
Sava crouched beside my chair. “Close your eyes.”
“I hate that instruction.”
“Close them anyway.”
I did. The darkness made everything too loud. My heartbeat. The soft drag of air through the corridor. Ronan’s breathing. Sava’s sleeve brushing her wrist. Lucien shifting his weight.
Ian.
No.
Not just Ian. More like…something warm behind the center of the corridor. Like my body remembering where calm belonged and resenting that it was behind a door.
My eyes opened. “Center.”
Lucien checked the watch. “Twenty-one seconds.”
The center door opened and Ian stepped out. The mark warmed in greeting before I could stop it and his eyes changed when he felt it. Not gold. Softer than that, though Ian didn’t seem built for softness. The hard line around his mouth eased and his shoulders dropped by a fraction.
Seeing him react to that tiny pulse did something to me. Not desire exactly. More like noticing a hand had been reaching in the dark and found another hand reaching back.
I looked away.
“Don’t look so impressed,” I said. “There were three doors. I had excellent odds.”
Ronan said, “Again.”
They ran it six times. By the fourth, my head hurt. By the fifth, I could tell when Ian was behind the left door before it fully closed. By the sixth, something changed.
Ian went behind the right door, but there was something else behind the center one.
I pointed right anyway. “He’s behind the right door. But there is someone behind the center door.”
Ian opened the right door.
Ronan turned to Lucien, and I realized quickly he hadn’t known. “Who is behind center?”
Lucien’s face changed and he crossed to the center door and opened it. A guard stood inside. Young. Male. Unfamiliar. His face went bloodless when Ronan looked at him.
“I told you to clear the rooms,” Ronan said.
The guard lowered his head. “Alpha, I was assigned to observe.”
“By whom?”
The guard swallowed. Ian came out of the right room with a silence that made the corridor smaller.
“By whom?” Ronan repeated.
“Elder Malrec.”
Of course.
The day had been missing a new reason to hate the elderly.
Ian stepped toward him. I felt the wolf before anyone moved, a clean, cold focus.
The guard shook once.
“He told me only to observe,” the guard said. “Only to report whether the human could sense the enforcer.”
“The human,” I said.
His eyes flicked to me and away.
Ian stopped in front of him. “Say her name.”
The guard went still, so did I.
Ian’s voice lowered. “If you are sent to measure her, threaten her, judge her, or carry word about her body to old men who want her dead, you will use her name.”
The mark pulsed, much hotter than before. I could not pretend that one was only his.
The guard swallowed. “Cassie Morgan.”
“Again.”
“Cassie Morgan.”
Ian stepped back. Ronan watched his brother with a face carved from stone.
Sava watched me and the monitor at my wrist had betrayed me again.
I looked at it. Then at Sava.
“Don’t.”
“I said nothing.”
“You are thinking medically.”
“That is my profession.”
Lucien escorted the guard out.
Ronan waited until the door closed. “Malrec is moving fast.”
Ian’s eyes stayed on the door. “He knows the hunt is not enough if we prepare.”
I leaned back in the chair, suddenly exhausted. “Glad my hallway performance provided counterintelligence.”
Ronan looked at me. “It did.”
“That was sarcasm.”
“It can be both.”
I closed my eyes and the corridor tilted a little. Ian was there before I opened them, crouched in front of my chair.
“Cassie.”
“I’m fine.”
His expression didn’t change.
“Fine adjacent,” I amended.
Sava came around the chair. “Training is done.”
“No,” Ronan said. “One more test.”
Ian’s head turned slowly.
Ronan met his glare. “Not distance. Choice.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“What choice?” I asked.
Ronan looked at the three doors. “We need to know whether you can separate him from another wolf, or if that was just a fluke.”
My stomach tightened.
Sava shook her head. “Not today.”
“Yes,” I said.
Ian looked at me. “No.”
I leaned forward enough that Sava made an unhappy sound. “If Malrec sent a guard to find out what we can do, then we need to find out first.”
“I do not want another wolf near you.”
“That is not the same as me being unable to handle one standing behind a door.”
The mark snapped warm with his objection.
Mine answered with anger. The two feelings met in the middle so sharply I lost my breath.
For one second, the corridor became only his face, my pulse, and the strange shared heat of two people realizing anger had brought them closer instead of farther apart.
I sat back and Ian looked away.
Good. Fine. Excellent. This was all medically horrifying.
Ronan, because he was Ronan, noticed everything and chose the worst possible moment to be practical.
“Lucien,” he said. “Get Cormac.”
Ian’s gaze snapped back. “No.”
“He is council, but not Malrec’s. He is old enough to count and vain enough to enjoy being useful.”
“I said no.”
Ronan’s voice lowered. “And I heard you.”
I spoke before Ian could. “Will Cormac try to kill me?”
Ronan looked at me. “Not in this corridor.”
“That was not as comforting as you think.”
“He will not touch you.”
“Can he stand behind a door without making it weird?”
Ronan glanced toward Ian. “That depends on Ian.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I’m too tired for all of you.”
Sava touched my wrist. “Then say stop.”
Everyone went quiet. I looked at her and she held my gaze. The simplest thing in the world, apparently. Stop. A word that should have belonged to me all along and had somehow become revolutionary in this building.
I looked at Ian. He was still crouched in front of me, every line of him locked against the test. Against another wolf. Against anything that put me at risk for proof. But he said nothing, he was just waiting, letting the final word be mine.
“I can do one more,” I said.
Ian’s jaw tightened, then he nodded.