Chapter 21 A Dangerous Admission
A Dangerous Admission
Ian
I carried Cassie into the suite because letting anyone else touch her was still beyond me.
Some part of me knew that was a problem.
Some part of me knew there were eyes on my back as I crossed the threshold, that guards had moved away from the door with the quick, careful obedience of men who didn’t want to find out what happened if they blocked me.
Sava followed close at my side, speaking in low, clipped orders.
Ronan’s voice cut through the hall behind us, cold enough to freeze blood, shutting down the council before any of them could decide my mate was a problem best solved while she was weak.
I understood pieces. Cassie’s blood on my hands. The torn ruin of Thorne throats beneath my teeth.
Sava saying, “Ian, if you crush her, I will put silver in your spine myself.”
Ronan saying my name with command in it, and the command breaking against me like rain on stone.
Cassie’s fingers twisted in my shirt. Her voice, raw and shaking, where nothing else had reached.
I’m alive. You found me. Now come back.
I had come back.
Mostly.
The suite was too bright. Too full of clean linen, cut flowers, polished floors, and the metallic stink of Cassie’s blood beneath all of it.
My wolf hated the room. Too many corners.
Too many doors. Too many places a threat could wait.
I carried her straight to the bed because Sava pointed there, and because Cassie made a small sound against my chest that sliced straight through what was left of my control.
“Easy,” she whispered.
The word was for me, which made it worse. I laid her down slowly, one inch at a time, fighting my own body when it wanted to curl over her, cover her, hide her from every living thing that had watched her bleed.
Her clothes were ruined. The fabric had been torn at the thigh, ripped along one side, smeared with mud and red.
There were claw marks down her arm, shallow enough that I had not killed for them twice, and deeper punctures along her hip where the half-shifted Thorne bastard had pinned her.
Bruises were already blooming around her wrists. A thin cut crossed her cheekbone.
Her face was too pale. Her eyes stayed on mine.
“Ian,” Sava said.
I turned my head toward her and she stopped three feet from the bed.
Sava had delivered half the pack into the world and cut silver out of grown wolves while they screamed. She had stared down elders, Alphas, war-mad youths, grieving mothers, and me on my worst nights. She had never looked afraid of me.
Now she looked careful. That got through.
I looked down at my hands. My fingers were still tipped in claws. I closed them slowly until the bones dragged back beneath skin. The shift hurt. Good. Pain gave the wolf something to chew on that was not the room.
Sava watched the claws disappear. “I need to clean her wounds.”
No.
The answer came up from the oldest part of me, so hard my jaw locked around it.
Cassie reached for my wrist. Her fingers were cold. “Let her.”
The wolf didn’t like it. The man understood.
I stepped back. One step. Only one.
Sava moved in at once, and I hated the competence of her hands because they touched Cassie where blood had dried.
I hated the bowl of water, the strips of cloth, the sharp smell of antiseptic.
I hated the way Cassie’s mouth tightened when Sava lifted the torn edge of her dress to see the punctures on her hip.
I hated the fact that I had been there too late to keep those wounds from happening.
“Do not stand over me breathing like that,” Sava said without looking at me. “You are making the air hostile.”
Cassie gave a faint, pained laugh. “The air was already hostile. We’re just personalizing it now.”
My gaze snapped to her. That tiny piece of humor, frayed and exhausted as it was, pulled me another inch out of the dark.
Sava’s expression softened for one brief second.
Then she went back to work. “You have three claw tears on your arm. They look worse than they are. Hip is ugly, but it missed anything vital. Shoulder is strained. Ribs are bruised. You will feel like death for two days and argue with me about staying in bed by morning.”
“That sounds medically optimistic.”
“It is a warning.”
Cassie’s lashes fluttered. She was trying to stay awake. She was trying to keep me calm by force of will while her body shook with the aftermath of terror.
I wanted to tear the world open.
Sava glanced at me. “Sit.”
I didn’t move.
Cassie squeezed my wrist. “Ian.”
I sat in the chair beside the bed.
Sava exhaled through her nose. “Wonderful. Civilization has entered the suite.”
The wolf didn’t care for her tone. The man knew she had earned it.
Sava cut the ruined fabric away from Cassie’s hip with small silver scissors. I tracked the blades. Sava noticed. Of course she did.
“If you lunge at my scissors, I will sedate you.”
“You can try.”
Cassie’s eyes opened. “Ian.”
The warning in her voice did what silver would not have done. It got under my skin and stayed there.
I looked at her instead of the scissors.
Her hair was tangled with leaves and sweat.
The mark at her shoulder was dark, swollen around the edges, threaded with faint black veins that pulsed when her pain spiked.
Mine answered beneath my skin, a deep tug behind the ribs, as if something inside me had hooked itself to the exact rhythm of her suffering.
“Breathe with me,” she whispered.
“I should be saying that to you.”
“Then pretend you are better at this and do it first.”
I breathed. Once. Again.
Her grip loosened a little.
Sava cleaned the punctures. Cassie went rigid, teeth sinking into her lower lip so hard I smelled the fresh bead of blood before I saw it.
A growl rolled out of me.
Sava froze.
Cassie didn’t. “No.”
The growl stopped with the word still vibrating in my chest.
Sava looked between us, eyes sharp. “That is going to be a problem.”
“It already is,” Cassie said.
“You understand what just happened out there?”
“I understand that three wolves tried to murder me and Ian killed them. I’m tired, Sava, so if there is a lecture about the finer points of pack optics, I would enjoy bleeding less before we begin.”
Sava’s mouth pressed flat, but her eyes warmed. “Good. You still have teeth.”
“I’ve had a very educational week.”
I leaned forward, unable to stop myself. “Cassie.”
She looked at me then, and the humor thinned. Underneath it was the hunt. The mud. The teeth. The moment she had been pinned beneath another male’s claws while I was too far away to stop him from touching what was mine.
No. Not mine. Hers.
Hers, and alive, and lying in this bed because she had called me back when every law in my body had wanted blood until nothing moved.
“I know,” she said softly.
She didn’t, but she knew enough.
Sava finished cleaning her hip and pressed a folded pad over the worst of it. “Hold this.”
I reached before thinking.
Sava’s hand snapped up. “Gently.”
Cassie’s palm covered the back of my hand and guided it into place. “Here.”
The pressure had to be firm. Not too much. Not too little. My hands knew how to break bone, close around throats, drag enemies backward into the dark. They were less certain with gauze and a woman who had trusted me while terrified.
Cassie watched my face while I held the pad to her skin.
“You came back,” she said.
My throat closed.
Sava’s hands slowed for one beat.
I looked at the bandage instead of Cassie’s eyes. “You called.”
“Ronan called too.”
“I heard him.”
“And?”
“And nothing in me cared.”
The truth sat there, ugly and bare.
Outside the suite, voices rose and cut off.
Ronan’s, low and lethal. Another elder, old enough to think age could protect him from consequences.
A door shut hard somewhere down the corridor.
The pack was moving around the shape of what had happened.
They would be counting bodies. Assigning blame.
Measuring the distance between Alpha command and the thing I had become when Cassie’s blood hit the air.
They had feared my wolf for years. Tonight, they had learned my wolf had one chain left in the world, and it was wrapped around a human woman the council already wanted dead.
Sava bandaged Cassie’s arm, then her hip. She checked Cassie’s pupils, her pulse, the mark, the bruises around her wrists. Every touch was professional. Every breath out of me had to be measured.
At last Sava straightened. “You need sleep. Actual sleep. No council. No interrogation. No brave nonsense.”
Cassie’s eyes slid toward me. “I’m not sure brave nonsense is the biggest threat in the room.”
“No. The biggest threat in the room is sitting in a chair pretending he is not still deciding whether the curtains insulted you.”
“They looked at her wrong,” I said.
Cassie’s mouth curved despite the exhaustion.
Sava pointed at me. “That. Stop that.”
“I was joking.”
“No, you were not.”
I was not entirely sure either.
Sava gathered the ruined cloth, bloodied pads, and metal bowl. She didn’t turn her back on me until Cassie said, “He’s all right.”
Sava paused. “Is he?”
Cassie looked at me for a long moment. Her fingers were still around my wrist. Her thumb moved once against my skin, small and tired and more powerful than any command I had ever obeyed.
“He’s here,” she said. “That’s enough for right now.”
Sava looked as if she wanted to argue. Then she glanced at Cassie’s face and chose the argument that mattered most. “I am going to stand outside this door. If her breathing changes, if the mark darkens, if she spikes a fever, if you feel yourself slipping, you open the door and call me. You do not decide you can handle it alone.”
I nodded once.
Her eyes narrowed. “With words, Ian.”
“Yes.”
She looked at Cassie. “You need water, food when you can stomach it, and sleep.”
Cassie nodded.
“And you,” Sava added, voice lowering, “do not manage him at the expense of yourself. Do you understand me?”
Cassie’s face changed. It was subtle, but I caught it. The tiny stillness of a woman who had been seen too clearly.