Chapter 22 A Cruel Kind of Truth
A Cruel Kind of Truth
Ian
I didn’t sleep.
Cassie did, eventually, though sleep had taken her like a debt collected rather than a mercy given. Sava had brought a cup of bitter tea, stood over her with the expression of a woman who had dragged larger wolves back from death by sheer contempt, and told Cassie to drink.
Cassie had argued because she was Cassie.
She made it through half a complaint about werewolf medicine tasting like old lawn clippings and regret before the pain took enough out of her that she stopped wasting strength.
She drank. She glared. She muttered something about lodging a formal complaint with the supernatural hospitality board.
Then her eyes closed. That had been hours ago.
I sat beside her bed and listened to her breathe.
The suite was too quiet around her. Too soft.
Too clean. It smelled of linen, salve, old blood, and the bitter herbs Sava had rubbed into Cassie’s torn skin.
A lamp burned low near the bed, throwing warm light across the bruises at her wrists, the sealed cut along her cheekbone, the bandage covering her hip.
She had curled onto her good side with one hand tucked beneath her cheek and the other wrapped around two of my fingers.
Even asleep, she held on. Even asleep, she knew better than to trust this place without an anchor.
The thought sat inside my ribs like broken glass.
Outside the suite, the pack didn’t sleep either.
Wolves moved through the hall in disciplined silence, which was almost worse than panic.
Orders came in low bursts. Guards rotated at the door, then at the balcony, then through the service passage.
Somewhere below us, council members argued inside thick old walls and thought stone made them private.
They were wrong. I heard enough.
“The full moon is tomorrow.”
“We cannot let it set.”
“The human has already compromised command.”
“If the mark becomes permanent, the enforcer belongs to a foreign hand.”
“Ronan must solve this before moonrise.”
Solve.
That was how cowards dressed murder when they wanted another man to carry the knife.
Cassie shifted in her sleep. I turned my hand under hers so her palm rested more easily against mine. The little crease between her brows softened.
I shut my eyes. For a moment, I felt her hand in my shirt in the hunt course. Her palm against my face. Her voice moving through blood and teeth and the thick red dark where Ronan’s command had gone silent.
I’m alive. You found me. Now come back.
I had. For her, I had, and the council had seen that. Ronan had seen it. Every wolf who had watched me ignore Alpha command and bend under Cassie’s shaking hand had seen the one thing more dangerous than my loss of control.
They had seen who held the chain.
A soft knock came at the outer door and my eyes opened.
Sava didn’t wait for permission. She eased inside with a medical bag in one hand and a knife she had not bothered to hide in the other.
She checked Cassie before she looked at me.
Cassie slept through Sava’s fingers at her wrist. She slept through the careful lift of the blanket, the inspection of the bandage, the hand Sava laid lightly over the bite mark.
Only when Sava touched the edge of Cassie’s jaw did Cassie murmur my name.
I leaned closer at once.
“I’m here.”
Cassie settled again.
Sava looked at me. There was no fear in her face now.
There had been, for one second after the hunt, when I carried Cassie through the door half back inside myself and half still on the killing ground.
Sava had hidden it quickly because she was too practical to waste time being afraid of a thing she had to manage.
Now she looked tired.
“You should sleep,” she said.
“No.”
“Excellent. I enjoy wasted advice.”
“She is in pain.”
“She was almost killed by three Thorne wolves. Pain is expected.”
I hated the plainness of it. I needed it too.
“Her breathing changed twice.”
“Because bodies are rude and continue being bodies without consulting you first.”
I looked at her.
Sava sighed. “She is stable. Hurt, exhausted, angry even in her sleep, but stable.”
Some of the pressure in my chest eased. Not enough.
Sava glanced toward the door. “Cormac is outside.”
“Why?”
“Because the human side is coming apart.”
I went still. Sava saw that too. She saw everything that mattered, which made her useful and deeply irritating.
“Her father is done accepting explanations,” she said. “He wants to see her. In person. He has demanded the doctor, the police, a lawyer, the resort owner, and someone named Joey, who may or may not be a legal authority.”
“Her family cannot push into the wrong wing,” I said.
“No. They cannot. Which is why Ronan wants you below.”
“No.”
Sava’s expression didn’t change. “I assumed you would begin there.”
“I am not leaving her.”
“I will stay with her.”
“No.”
“Careful,” Sava said.
The word was not sharp. It was worse. It was soft enough to get under my skin.
I looked up at her.
She held my stare. “You trust me to keep her breathing, or you do not.”
“That is not the question.”
“It is one of them. The other is whether you can walk away from this bed for twenty minutes without proving every frightened wolf in the building correct.”
My jaw tightened. Cassie’s fingers flexed around mine in her sleep, as if even unconscious she had felt the room shift.
Sava noticed, of course.
“She is listening for you,” she said. “Even like this. Her body is tired enough to shut down, and she is still spending strength tracking your mood. Do not make that another injury.”
I looked down at Cassie. The blankets were tucked carefully around her. A strand of hair clung to her cheek. Her mouth was softer in sleep, but not peaceful. She looked like a woman who had learned too much and survived anyway.
I bent and pressed my mouth to her temple.
She exhaled.
“I will be close,” I whispered.
I didn’t know if she heard me but I needed to say it anyway.
Sava moved toward the bedside chair. “I will bolt the door after you leave.”
“A bolt will not stop me if she needs me.”
“No,” Sava said. “It will reassure her if she wakes and you are gone.”
That found the place it was meant to cut. Cassie would trust a locked door more than she trusted the men outside it. She was learning our world too well.
I stood before the thought could become another reason to refuse.
Cormac waited in the sitting room with his coat off, sleeves rolled to his forearms, and blood dried in a dark smear near one elbow. Two cups of coffee sat untouched on the table. He looked toward the bedroom first, then at me.
“You look terrible,” he said.
“Sava already tried that.”
“She likely used better bedside manner.”
“She threatened to drug me.”
“I said better, not kinder.”
I crossed the room. “Where is Ronan?”
“Below. Council annex.”
My wolf lifted its head.
Cormac noticed. His face lost the last hint of humor. “Evelyn has been detained.”
I started for the door.
“Alive,” he added.
“For now.” I growled.
“That was implied by detained.”
I turned on him.
Cormac didn’t move, but his voice lowered. “Before you start tearing through the old wing, you need to understand the rest.”
“There is always more.”
“Yes. Tonight more comes with human shouting.”
I stopped.
Cormac’s eyes moved briefly toward the direction of the family wing.
“Cassie’s father is escalating. The staff have used the allergic reaction story, the fall story, the doctor’s orders story, and the storm interference story.
None of them are holding. The bride is pushing too. Quieter than her father, but sharper.”
“Tessa wants Cassie.”
“Yes.”
“And Grant?”
Cormac’s mouth tightened. “The groom? He wants his wedding.”
The words landed with a cold, ugly satisfaction I didn’t like in myself.
I had no fondness for Cassie’s family. Her father had let pity and pride cut her in small public ways all weekend. Her mother hid discomfort behind social smoothing. Tessa had been too wrapped in silk, flowers, and a stolen history with the wrong man to see her sister clearly.
Grant was worse. Grant had looked at Cassie like history he had outgrown, then stood beside her sister and expected the whole room to pretend there was nothing cruel in that.
Still, none of them deserved death.
Not even him.
Cormac saw something in my face. “Come on.”
We took the service corridor.
The resort around us had the wrong feel.
Too many wolves awake behind closed doors.
Too much silver taken from old cabinets and carried under jackets.
Too much fear pressed into discipline. The walls were polished, the carpet clean, the art tasteful enough for wealthy humans, and beneath it all the building had become a trap waiting to decide who counted as prey.
As we passed the junction near the human wing, a man’s voice cut through the hallway.
“I am done being handled.”
Cassie’s father.
I stopped before I chose to.
Cormac stopped with me.
The voice came again, rough from hours of frustration. “I want my daughter. Not a text. Not another message through some resort manager with a smile stapled on. I want Cassie in front of me.”
A staffer answered in the trained voice of someone paid to make lies sound like service. “Sir, we understand your concern. Ms. Morgan is resting comfortably and cannot receive visitors tonight.”
“Then the doctor can come explain that to me.”
“We are arranging that.”
“You have been arranging that for days.”
Tessa spoke next.
Her voice was strained, but it carried clean through the wall. “Dad, stop letting them make this about you being difficult. Ask where she is. Ask why no one will let us speak to her without someone standing there.”
Smart girl.
The thought came from somewhere fierce and unexpected.
Grant answered with smooth annoyance. “Tessa, everyone is upset, but making a scene is not helping. The venue is already under pressure. If we keep escalating, we can forget any chance of salvaging the weekend.”