CHAPTER FIVE

JESSICA’S POV

The cave didn't just feel small; it felt like it was shrinking, the rough stone walls thrusting in upon me as though the earth itself had made up its mind to put out the fire raging in my veins.

I was not feeling the “pull” in my chest anymore. It was a fever, a white-hot pain which waved in the trauma of the previous night into the background. It was as though some one had thrust a sword through my sternum and poured molten silver into my circulatory system. Each beat was a strike of a hammer at my ribs which caused a shiver of pain in my members.

I tore at the shift which the rogues had furnished me with a scratchy, skin-thin thing and my flesh was so delicate, that even the touch of the cotton was like sandpaper on open flesh. I found it painful to breathe, my lungs full of hot ash. I fell on the ground and my fingers dug in the dirt trying to find a ground against the rising heat.

"Jessica, look at me! Focus on my voice, fuck, damn it!" Ryder was desperate in his voice, which was divested of the normal lightness of his voice.

He had fallen on his knees by the cot-side, and his green eyes were panicking in a frenzy with which I had never seen him panicked before, even when he was grappling with the scouts of Thorne. He held my hands, and his fingers enclosed them as he tried to keep me from clawing at my collar bone with my nails.

“It burns, Ryder... it burns me inside out.... it burns....” I rasped.

My voice was not my voice anymore. It was more profound, vibrating, pained with a low-toned hum which made the loose pebbles on the cave floor to shake and wiggle.

It was like the rumbling of some ancient creature, still far down the mountains, being now roused after a thousand years of rest.

I drew my back up, as a new impulse of fire poured through me. My vision grew whitish, the world seemed to grow blurred and dissolved into a deep, heavenly violet. And the cave disappeared, for an instant.

I could glimpse things I could not understand, vast plains of snow by a blood-red moon, a white wolf larger than the trees, and the feeling that, somehow, a thousand ancestors were screaming in my blood, their voices a living roar that had to be heard.

"Jax, look at her back!" Ryder screamed and the grip tightened until his knuckles turned white. "Under the shoulder blade. Is that... is that a brand? Through the cloth it is shining!

Jax stepped forward with his massive figure that consumed the fire pit. His eyes were strained in awe and horror. "Ryder, get back. Look at the light. It is not only heat, but it is pressure. It is changing the air around her.”

They did not need to tell me what was going on. I felt it. A throbbing, beat-like aching in the spot where the heart ought to have been, only it was the back of my ribs. That skin was being branded with something unfamiliar and supernatural, a branding, which was being impressed into my soul. The pain was so great that I could taste copper in the back of my throat and my vision was playing sparks of violet.

"Is it Thorne's?" I choked, and my lungs caught me as I thought of the horrifying way he gripped my hand upon the altar. “Did he... did the ceremony go through I ran? Is it him? Is he marking me over the woods?”

“No, no,” Jax answered, and his face burnt in the flickering fire-light, his voice shook in a manner that seemed to me more than the suffering. "Thorne is a Blackthorn. They have a jagged thorny crown and it is the sign of power and blood. This... this is something else. It appears to be the leftover of the Old Gods, the sign of the First Packs. I have never even heard of this in the forbidden scrolls. It shouldn't exist, Jessica. This has not been witnessed on this earth in centuries.”

I suddenly felt a desperate, animalistic passion to see my own death, and, therefore, I dashed toward a shallow pool of rainwater that had collected against the wall of the cave. I disregarded the objection of my mangled ankle, and dragged my body with the sharp stones as though I were a wounded animal. I swung round and gathered the shift under my shoulder and gazed at my self-reflection in the dark, smooth water.

It wasn't a pack mark. It wasn't a mate bond.

It was a crescent moon, and it blinded by a violet light that was violent, iridescent, and beat like a second heart. It was seven stars round the moon, and stained in silver light, and shone even in the dark. A piece of the heavenly sky, it was as though, had got stuck in my flesh and was beating at the same time.

“This.... this is a curse,” Ryder breathed, his voice barely a whisper. And he stretched out to brush the edge of the glow and his fingers trembled. He just had time to touch it, when a guttural snarl cut through the entrance of the cave.

“Touch her, and you lose your hand, Ryder.”

Kai was back.

He was framed in a lightning flash that burst suddenly, violently. His garments were completely wet, his black fur-lined coat wet in both rain and the copper smell of the guards he must have killed.

His eyes in silver fell on the hand of Ryder, still too near my bare shoulders. The atmosphere of the cave was chilled in a moment.

Ryder did not draw away immediately. He bristled, and his own wolf strained to the surface. "She's in pain, Kai. I'm trying to help her."

“I told you once,” Kai interrupted, as he crawled in our direction, his voice a promise of death.

He did not simply walk, but he owned the space. He stepped between me and Ryder, forcing the smaller man to back away. "She is my responsibility. Back. Off."

The tension between the two men was thick enough to choke on. Jax stood by the fire, his eyes darting between the three of us, his jaw tight. He didn't speak, but his hands were curled into fists, his gaze lingering on the way Kai’s body shielded mine.

He was looking at me. Truly looking at me, as if seeing me for the first time since we were children playing in the dirt.

“It’s not just because of gambling debts that yout step father sold you, Jessy," Kai muttered, turning his back on the other two as if they were no longer a threat. He knelt before me, his presence overwhelming. He didn't have answers, only a dark, heavy suspicion. "He sold you because he was afraid. He didn't just sell you to Thorne for money, he sold you to Thorne to bury you."

"Thorne isn't just looking for a wife. He's looking for the power he thinks is hidden in your lineage. And he will kill anyone who stands between him and that power."