Chapter 25 The Wrong Kind of Right
The Wrong Kind of Right
Cassie
We got them to the cars.
I didn’t remember every step of it. That seemed fair, since my brain had been expected to process far too much already and was now functioning like a browser with thirty-seven tabs open, several of them screaming.
There had been blood on the service corridor floor.
Henry barking. My father asking questions too loudly while running, which was apparently his crisis style.
My mother crying and still trying to make sure everyone else was accounted for.
Tessa half carrying Henry, half being dragged by him.
Grant making one useless attempt to take charge before Sava looked at him and said, “If you speak again, I will classify you as a delay.”
He had stopped speaking.
That was the most useful thing he had done all week.
The service road waited behind the laundry wing, slick with rain and gray light.
Three dark SUVs idled near the curb with their headlights cutting through the mist. Two of Ronan’s wolves stood guard near the first vehicle, both in human form, both looking very much like men who had been given orders they didn’t like and were bright enough to follow anyway.
Sava shoved keys at my father. “First car. Follow the lead vehicle. No stopping. No turning around. No getting heroic. If anything hits the car, keep driving.”
My father stared at her. “If anything hits the car?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell kind of resort is this?”
“The kind you are leaving.”
My mother climbed into the back seat, shaking so badly Tessa had to help her. Henry tried to leap into the front and was redirected into the second row with the sort of offended bark usually reserved for squirrels and vacuum cleaners.
“Tessa,” I said.
She turned to me. Her hair was soaked, her face streaked with rain and tears, her engagement ring bright and stupid on her hand.
“Go,” I said.
“No.”
“Tessa.”
“Absolutely not!”
“This is not the time for sister bonding.”
Grant appeared behind her, pale and shaking, clutching one of the broken zip ties like it was evidence in a lawsuit he intended to file with God. “We need to leave. Now. This is insane.”
Tessa didn’t look at him. “Get in the car.”
“I am trying to get everyone in the car.”
“No, you’re trying to be in charge because being scared makes you unbearable.”
His mouth opened.
Tessa pointed at the SUV. “Car.”
He got in.
I would have enjoyed that more if my entire body had not been held together by spite, stitches, and whatever cursed magic thought now was a good time to be emotionally complicated.
Sava put her hand at my back. “You too.”
I nodded. I even tried. I got one hand on the open SUV door. I saw the dark interior. Henry’s muddy paws on the seat. My mother’s hands pressed against her mouth. My father behind the wheel, looking over his shoulder at me with fear so open it almost made him unfamiliar.
Then the bond tore. No warning. No slow pull. It ripped through me from shoulder to spine, from throat to hip, from the deepest place inside my chest where Ian had been warm even when everything else was terrible.
I dropped and my knees hit the pavement. The scream tore out of me before I knew it was mine. The world went white, then black at the edges. I heard Tessa shout my name. My father cursed. My mother started sobbing again.
Sava was on the ground beside me. “Cassie.”
I clutched at my shoulder. The mark burned under my sweater. Not hot. Worse. Empty. Something was being pulled out of it by the roots, and every root was attached to something alive.
Ian.
He was ripping at the final pieces. He was breaking it. He was breaking us.
No.
He was breaking himself.
The understanding came through the pain so clearly it almost felt calm. Ian had not planned to follow. He had never planned to follow. The look in his eyes when he told me to run had been goodbye with teeth around it.
That tragic, self-sacrificing, emotionally constipated bastard.
He thought this would save me.
I could feel him in pieces. Blood. Rage. A dark, brutal focus. The bond thinned again, and underneath it I felt the shape of his choice. He was carving himself away from me because a dead man could not be used as a leash.
“Ian,” I gasped.
Sava’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “Breathe.”
“He’s doing it.”
“I know.”
“He’s breaking it!”
“I know.”
The second I heard it in her voice, I understood she had known before now.
I lifted my head. “You knew.”
Sava’s face looked carved out of grief and rain. “I knew what he intended.”
“And you let me leave!”
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“I am going back!”
“No!”
The word came from my father. It cracked across the service road, raw and panicked and still somehow carrying every ounce of fatherly authority he seemed to believe worked on adult women during supernatural emergencies.
I looked at him from my hands and knees.
He had climbed halfway out of the SUV. His face was pale beneath the blood at his mouth. “No. Cassie, no. Get in the car.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You are hurt. You are bleeding. There are monsters back there.”
“One of them is mine!”
My mother made a broken sound.
Tessa got out of the SUV despite my father shouting her name. “Cassie.”
“Stay here.”
“You just said you’re going back.”
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
“No.”
Her face crumpled and hardened at the same time. “You do not get to vanish for days, show up half dead, throw us into a werewolf hostage situation, then tell me to sit in a car.”
“Tessa, if you follow me, I will have to worry about you instead of him.”
Her mouth closed.
I pushed myself upright, shaking. Sava helped because she was practical, not because I had given permission. My hip screamed. My ribs joined in. My shoulder felt like someone had stuck a hand through the mark and started twisting.
The bond pulled again and I nearly fell again.
Sava caught me. “You cannot run.”
“Then I’ll limp angrily.”
“This is not funny!”
“No. It is worse. Which means if I stop making jokes, I’m going to start screaming, and no one has time for that.”
My father came around the SUV. “Cassie, listen to me.”
“No, Dad. You listen to me.” My voice shook, but I made it work. “You are going to get Mom and Tessa out. You are going to keep Henry in the car. You are going to not let Grant drive anything, because I may be dying, but I am not dying stupid.”
Grant’s voice came from inside the SUV. “I can hear you.”
“I know.”
My father looked like I had slapped him.
Good. Maybe it would keep him awake.
“I need you to leave,” I said. “If you come after me, Ian dies trying to protect all of us at once. If you stay here and go when Sava’s people tell you, I have a chance to get him back.”
“You have a chance?” he repeated.
I didn’t answer, because the truth was, I didn’t know. The truth was, going back felt like signing my name at the bottom of a death warrant. Mine. Maybe Ian’s. Maybe everyone’s if Ronan lost whatever thin hold he had left on the pack.
But leaving felt worse. Leaving meant Ian died believing he had only ever been a weapon.
Leaving meant all those wolves got to be right about him.
Leaving meant the one good thing between us, however ridiculous, however bloody, however inconvenient for every old law in the building, ended because he thought sacrifice was the only language love understood.
“I have to go,” I said.
My mother got out of the car then. She didn’t cry this time. She came to me, put both hands on my face, and looked at me the way she used to when I was little and feverish and pretending I was fine because I didn’t want medicine.
“You come back,” she said.
“I’ll try.”
“No.” Her fingers tightened. “You come back.”
My throat closed.
“I’ll try harder,” I said.
She nodded like that was acceptable, because sometimes mothers accepted lies when the truth was too large to hold.
Tessa stepped forward and grabbed my hand. “Is he worth this?”
I looked toward the corridor as the pain tore through my chest again.
Ian was farther away.
Less human.
“Yes,” I said. “He is.”
Tessa let go.
I turned before anyone could say something that would make me weaker.
Sava stayed at my side and we went back into the resort.
Every step back through the service corridor hurt more than the last. My body knew I was doing something stupid and was trying to register an official complaint.
The mark burned under my sweater. Blood ran warm down my side where the stitches had opened.
I kept one hand on the wall and one hand around the silver blade Sava had shoved at me.
“Soft parts,” she said as we moved.
“What?”
“If something gets past me. Stab soft parts.”
“I was hoping for more instruction.”
“You have enthusiasm. Use that.”
“I am not enthusiastic. I am furious.”
“Even better.”
The sound from the courtyard changed before we reached it. The battle was ending, which should have been good.
It was not.
The roar that came next shook dust from the service arch.
It was Ian. Or what was left of him.
I stumbled, and Sava grabbed me before I hit the wall.
“He’s gone feral,” she said.
“No.”
“Cassie.”
“No.”
We came through the arch just as Ronan’s voice cut across the courtyard.
“Ian. Do not make me do this.”
The courtyard had become a slaughterhouse with floral arrangements.
Bodies lay across the white stone. Some wolves.
Some men. Some half one thing and half the other.
Blood ran in pink ribbons through the rain.
The fountain was broken open, water spilling over the shattered edge.
Something that had to be Silas lay in and around it in pieces I refused to understand.
Ronan stood near the center, blood on his face, his body half shifted, power rolling off him in waves. Several of his wolves stood between him and the service arch.
Ian was in front of them.
Full wolf.
Huge. Dark. Blood-soaked. His fur lay slick against a body too large for the word wolf to cover. His head was low. His teeth were bare. His eyes were gold and empty of everything except threat.
He stood between Ronan’s pack and the route I had taken.
Guarding it.
Guarding us.
Dying on it.