Chapter 18 One Good Thing #2
I crossed the distance without sound, and the bond flared as she felt me coming.
A breath moved behind the wall, then stopped.
Stone stood between us, but every inch of me knew she was there, and the control it took not to go around the wall and take the answer with my hands almost brought me to my knees.
“Cassie,” I said.
No answer came. Good. She should not answer.
I closed my eyes and let the bond pull. Heat moved through it slower now, with fear beneath it and desire beginning to wake underneath that.
She didn’t want me because I had touched her.
She didn’t want me because I stood over her.
She wanted because I had found her, because the chase had spoken to something neither of us had named in daylight.
The wolf wanted teeth in the sweater at her shoulder. The man wanted her mouth under mine again.
“I found you,” I said.
Still, she gave me nothing.
Then fabric shifted, and her voice came low from behind the wall. “Prove it.”
The bond pulsed with her challenge, and the old law stirred beneath my skin in answer. Find didn’t mean see. Find didn’t mean scent. Find meant the wolf reached the mate, and the mate acknowledged him by yielding, running, fighting, or calling the next move.
Cassie was not yielding, which made the wolf’s pleasure immediate and violent.
I stepped around the wall. She moved before I fully cleared it.
She was not fast enough to outrun me, not in any world that obeyed the shape of our bodies, but she was fast enough to make the hunt real.
She slipped through the narrow gap and into the next lane, one hand pressed near her bandage, jaw tight against pain.
I could have caught her in two strides, but I didn’t. I let her run six, then seven, enough for her to choose motion before I followed. Slowly for me. Too fast for the wolf.
She reached the low cypress line and turned, breathing hard, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with fury and fear and something that heated her scent enough to make my vision sharpen.
“Still found you,” I said.
Her chest rose and fell. “You didn’t catch me.”
“No.”
“Could you have?”
“Yes.”
Her mouth parted, and the bond burned warm between us. Every wolf on the ground watched us. Every law waited for me to turn instinct into proof.
Cassie watched only me.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked.
“Because you had not asked me to.”
The words crossed the distance and struck her. I felt the impact through the bond, not as pain and not only as surprise. Desire moved through her, immediate and human, and mine answered before I could bury it.
Her cheeks flushed darker.
Sava reached us before I could make myself step closer. “Enough.”
Cassie looked at her. “I’m not done.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Did the monitor say that?”
“No,” Sava said. “Your face did.”
Cassie opened her mouth, then closed it, which meant Sava had won more decisively than anyone on the council ever had.
Sava took her elbow, gentle but firm. “You made him search. You made him choose control. You made the point.”
Cassie glanced at me. She didn’t know what point she had made, but I did. So did Sava. So did Ronan, though he would call it useful and pretend it didn’t disturb him.
Cassie had run. I had hunted. I had found her. She had challenged. I had stopped. The bond had strengthened without pain, and that would matter tomorrow. Hell it might save her life.
It might ruin us both before then.
Sava led Cassie toward the shaded bench near the terrace. Cassie went reluctantly, and she only limped when she thought no one was watching.
I watched.
Ronan came down from the terrace, his eyes following Cassie before they turned to me. “That was reckless.”
“Yes.”
“Useful.”
“Yes.”
“You let her run.”
“She chose to.”
“You could have caught her.”
“Yes.”
His mouth tightened. “That was for her?”
I looked at Cassie, seated now while Sava checked the bandage beneath the sweater’s collar.
She was arguing with Sava, and Sava was ignoring her with the calm of a woman who had outlived more dangerous patients than Cassie Morgan.
Color still marked Cassie’s face, and every few seconds her eyes found me again before she looked away.
“No,” I said. “That was for the bond.”
Ronan went still.
I looked back at him. “If I catch her because I can, the hunt proves force. If I find her, wait, and she still chooses the next move, the bond answers.”
Ronan studied me for long enough that the wolf grew restless. “Careful.”
“I am.”
“No,” he said, his gaze cutting once to Cassie. “You are becoming something else.”
He was right, so I didn’t answer.
Sava looked toward us from the bench. “Ian.”
The edge in her voice moved me before thought did.
I crossed the ground and stopped several paces away when she lifted one hand. Cassie sat very still on the stone bench, one hand gripping the edge beside her thigh. Her pulse had climbed, and the scent of her heat had climbed with it, no longer subtle enough for the watching wolves to miss.
Sava held my gaze. “That distance. No closer.”
Cassie’s head lifted, her eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“Because I said so,” Sava answered, and there was enough steel in it that Cassie gave her a look but didn’t push.
I kept my body still. The wolf wanted to close the space, not to take, but to settle her, to put my hands where the bond would quiet. My body wanted worse than that, and Cassie, with her flushed face and stubborn eyes, felt enough of it to go very still.
Sava saw that too.
“Training is over,” she said.
Ronan took one step forward. “She needs another pass.”
“No,” Sava said.
The word was quiet enough to be polite and final enough to make the entire terrace listen.
Ronan’s eyes hardened.
Sava didn’t lower hers. “Oh keep your looks Ronan. She made him search, he found her, and the mark responded in a way I need to evaluate away from witnesses. If you want her on her feet tomorrow night, you are finished using her today.”
Cassie’s mouth tightened. “I’m right here.”
“Yes,” Sava said. “And you are coming with me.”
Cassie looked at me, and for once there was no joke waiting. “Are you coming?”
The question was simple, which made it worse and the wolf answered yes before I could.
Sava answered first. “No.”
Cassie’s eyes flicked to her. “Why?”
Sava’s expression stayed calm. “Because I need to check your bandage, and Ian needs to stand somewhere else until he remembers how to breathe normally.”
Cormac coughed into his fist.
Cassie lifted her chin. “That was unnecessary.”
“It was necessary enough,” Sava said. “Move.”
The answer was not the full truth, but it was true enough for the field.
Cassie looked back at me, and the bond carried what her face didn’t quite show. She liked that I wanted to follow. She liked that I didn’t. The feeling reached me with enough clarity that I had to turn my head and breathe through my mouth.
Sava noticed, of course. Her look said everything she didn’t say in front of Ronan, Cormac, and two council watchers on the west path.
Distance. Control. Decide before the bond decides for you.
I nodded once.
Cassie let Sava take her toward the east wing. She looked back only when they reached the doors, then she was gone.
The training ground felt colder after she left.
Ronan approached, but before he could speak, Cormac’s cane tapped against stone. The old wolf looked toward the closed doors, then at me with amusement sharpened into something almost serious.
“Well,” Cormac said. “If the council wanted proof that the mark is false, this morning didn’t help them.”
Ronan’s eyes cut to him. “You will say that tomorrow?”
“I will say what I saw.” Cormac’s gaze moved to me. “Whether that helps depends on whether your enforcer remembers he is proving a bond, not satisfying a chase.”
The wolf bared its teeth inside my skin.
Cormac smiled slightly. “Good. He heard me.”
I left before I answered with something Ronan would have to explain. When I returned to the east wing, Sava was waiting outside Cassie’s suite.
Alone.
My body went still. “Is she hurt?”
“No.”
“Fever?”
“Low.”
“Pain?”
“Managed.”
“Then why are you outside?”
Sava looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with medicine. “Because she is dressed, clean, fed, and irritated with me, which I take as a sign of improvement. Lucien brought her suitcase, and her own clothes helped.”
I waited because she had more to say.
“She asked for you once,” Sava said.
The wolf went quiet.
Sava saw that too. “I didn’t tell her I was waiting to speak to you first.”
“Why?”
“Because she deserves one night without me turning every feeling in her body into a symptom.” Her gaze lifted to mine, sharp enough to cut through every defense I still had. “Now I am speaking to you as her physician, and I need you to hear me before you go through that door.”
I said nothing.
“The mark is moving toward heat response. You are moving toward rut. Neither of you is fully there, but if you stand in the same room with her right now, every wolf within a generous radius is going to know exactly what you want.”
Despite everything, the shape of the sentence almost pulled a laugh from me. Almost.
Sava didn’t smile. “Do not look amused. I am annoyed at both of you professionally.”
“I have control.”
“You had control this morning because she was visible, supervised, and thirty feet away. Tonight she is clean, frightened, angry, alive, and wearing her own skin again. You need to be much more honest about what that will do to you.”
The wolf listened. So did I.
Sava stepped closer. “Consummating the bond may strengthen it before the hunt.”
My breath stopped.
She continued before I could speak. “I am not ordering it. I am not recommending it in any official capacity, and if you tell Ronan I said anything this specific, I will deny it with conviction. But if she chooses you, and you refuse because you are afraid of what wanting her makes you, do not pretend you are protecting her.”
My throat tightened.