Chapter 5: Mark me first

*Isabella*

"My beast wants to mark you so no one ever looks at you in red again."

Kael's words sent heat through my whole body, even while his gold eyes were black with beast.

He was over me, caging me in his bed, his cursed fur cloak covering both of us like a dark tent, my red dress tangled around my legs. His hands were on either side of my head, claws slightly out, breathing hard against my neck, his white shirt open, his chest heaving.

"You don't get to say that," I whispered, angry, jealous, scared of the strange pull inside me. "You locked me in. Your ex-Luna was downstairs in red, hugging you, and you told me to stay hidden like a shameful pet. Like I am not good enough to stand next to her."

"Shameful?" His eyes flashed gold, hurt and angry. "I locked you to protect you. Selene knows what you are now. If the other Alphas know there is a Silver White alive, they will hunt you. They killed your kind fifty years ago. Do you know what they do to Silver Whites, Isabella? They chain them and drain their blood because it heals anything."

"I don't care! I am not your Luna to hide! You made me wear this red dress and your fur and then you hide me!"

"You are my Luna because you wear my skin and live!" He growled, his forehead touching mine, possessive, desperate, his breath hot on my lips. "You think I want to hide you? I want to bite you here," he brushed his lips over my neck where my pulse beat wildly, making me shiver in the red dress, "and mark you so every wolf in this pack smells you are mine and no one dares look at you in that red dress again. Especially not her. Especially not anyone."

My small silver wolf inside my chest whimpered and pushed forward, wanting his teeth, wanting his mark.

"Then why don't you?" I challenged, tears in my eyes, hitting his chest. "Every night you chain yourself. Every night you say you will kill me if you mark me. Like you killed her. I am tired of being afraid you will kill me, Kael! If you want me, mark me!"

His whole body froze over me.

"Is that what you think? That I will kill you like I killed Selene?"

"Didn't you? Everyone says you did."

He sat back, his hands running through his black wavy hair, broken. For the first time, the Beast Alpha, the Alpha who everyone feared, looked like a man haunted, guilty, lonely.

"On our mating night, my beast took over. I could not control the shift. It was blood moon, like tonight. Selene wore my fur cloak, and my beast... he smelled fear, not mate. He scratched her throat. Just a scratch. She bled, but she did not die. She ran. She ran to the Blood Moon Pack, to their Alpha. And she let me believe for five years that I was a murderer. That I killed my own Luna. So I wore this cursed skin as punishment. I never touched another woman. I chained myself every full moon. I became the Beast they said I was."

He looked at me in the red dress, his fur around us, his eyes gold and wet.

"Kael..."

"So no," he whispered, leaning down again, his lips at my neck, his teeth grazing, not biting, teasing, making my whole body arch in the red dress. "I will not mark you like a beast tonight. Because if I mark you, I want you to mark me first. I want to belong to you before you belong to me."

I gasped. "What? Lunas don't mark Alphas first. It's forbidden. The Alpha always marks first."

"Everything about you is forbidden. Silver White Lunas are said to be stronger than Alphas. The legends say they mark first to tame the beast. To break the curse."

His hand slid to my waist in the red dress, pulling me flush against him, his fur cloak falling over us both.

"Mark me, Isabella. Bite me here," he tilted his head, exposing his throat, his pulse, his vulnerability to me, a wolfless girl who was supposed to die tonight. "Tame your beast. So I stop being afraid I will kill you. So I can finally be human again for you. Please."

From inside me, that silver wolf that had been sleeping for twenty-one years, that everyone said did not exist, suddenly surged. My gums ached. My nails lengthened, silver. My eyes burned silver.

And for the first time in my twenty-one years of being called hollow, wolfless, cursed, I felt fangs. Sharp, real.

I leaned forward, shaking, crying, and bit Kael, the Beast Alpha, on his throat, hard.

He groaned, a broken, possessive, relieved groan, his whole body shuddering, his hands fisting in my hair, in my red dress, holding me to him as my small, new silver bite marked his skin and his cursed fur cloak that covered us both turned completely silver, glowing like moonlight, blinding, and somewhere outside the mansion, his huge gray wolf that was his beast howled a mate howl that shook the forest, and inside me, my wolf finally, finally howled back, silver and loud and alive.