Marked In the Dark,Married In Disguise

I wore my best underwear under my coat that night, and that was the first stupid thing I did.

It was a plain black set. I bought it with money I saved from three months of washing dishes in the pack kitchen. I kept thinking about it as I climbed the stairs of the Ashfall guest house, because thinking about it was easier than thinking about my heart. It was pounding so hard I was sure the whole pack could hear it.

Tonight was Blood Moon Night. Every wolf over nineteen in Hollowmere and Ashfall had waited all year for it. When the moon turned red, wolves could smell their fated mates from across a field. Everyone said it was the most beautiful night of your life.

I did not expect a fated mate. My name is Mira Hale. I am nineteen years old, the daughter of our pack Gamma, and I have no wolf.

When I turned thirteen, my friends started hearing voices in their heads. They shifted for the first time and ran through the trees on four legs, laughing together in their minds. I sat on the porch steps and heard nothing. Only my own breathing.

Sometimes I felt something deep inside me. A faint warmth, like someone sleeping in another room of a very big house. I told people about it once. Only once. After that, the whole pack called me a liar. Wolfless freak. Pathetic human. My stepmother Vivienne said it the loudest. My half sister Selene said it with a smile, which was worse.

Only one person never laughed. Dorian Ashe, the heir of Ashfall Pack.

He sat with me at lunch when no one else would. He walked me home when Selene's friends followed me. Three weeks ago, he told me his plan. We would mate and mark each other on the first Blood Moon Night after my birthday. Once we were marked, no fated mate could ever pull us apart. And as the future Alpha's mate, nobody could touch me again.

"You will never be alone again, Mira," he had said.

I believed him. That was the biggest stupid thing of all.

I reached his door at nine. The hallway smelled like smoke and wet earth, and somewhere outside a wolf howled. I fixed my hair. I breathed in and out. I told myself I was brave.

Then I pushed the door open.

For one second my brain refused to understand what my eyes saw. Dorian was on the bed, naked, his skin shining in the red moonlight from the window. I had imagined this moment a hundred times. But in my imagination, there was no other woman sitting on top of him.

Selene.

My little sister, with her long dark hair falling over her shoulders, her hands flat on his chest.

"What are you doing?" My voice came out thin and strange. "Selene?"

She turned her head slowly. When she saw me, she did not gasp or cover herself. She smiled. Then she bent down and bit Dorian's neck, right in front of me, and moaned like she was performing for an audience.

"Oh yes," she whispered. "Just like that."

My stomach rolled. I thought I would be sick on the floor.

Dorian looked up, and the color left his face. "Mira," he said. He tried to sit up, but Selene pushed him back down with one finger. And he let her. That was what broke something in me. He let her.

"This is not what it looks like," he said.

"It looks like my sister is in your bed," I said.

"We found out an hour ago." He swallowed. "Mira, listen to me. Selene and I are fated mates."

The words hit me like a slap.

Fated mates. I knew what that meant. On Blood Moon Night, wolves older than nineteen could smell the one the Moon Goddess made for them. The pull was impossible to fight. They could drive each other into heat just by standing in the same room. The only way to resist it was to mark a chosen mate before you ever met your fated one.

That was exactly what Dorian and I had planned to do tonight. Two hours too late.

"I walked up here to give myself to you," I said. I hated how my voice shook. "I wore this stupid coat to hide what I had on under it."

Guilt moved across his face. For a moment he looked like the boy who used to carry my books. He started to rise. "Mira, I never wanted to hurt you."

Selene caught his hand and laced her fingers through his. She looked at me from under her dark lashes, and her eyes were bright with pleasure.

"Don't be dramatic, sister," she said. "You can't blame anyone for fate."

"You hated him," I said. "You told me last week he was boring."

"That was before I smelled him." She laughed. "Now stop staring. It's embarrassing for you."

I looked at Dorian. I wanted him to say something. Anything. I wanted him to tell her to shut her mouth, to put on his shirt, to come after me.

Instead he cleared his throat. "Fated mates make each other stronger, Mira. You know that. I have to think about the pack. About my father's expectations. It would be foolish to ignore it."

"So that was your answer," I said. "Foolish."

"It is just the way things are."

"Then what was I?"

He did not reply. His eyes flickered, and I saw the gold flash of his wolf come up behind them. When he looked at me again, the boy was gone. Something cold stared out from his face.

"Go home, human," his wolf growled. "This room is not for you."

Selene arched her back and pulled him down to her again.

I turned and ran.

I do not remember the stairs or the front door. I remember the cold air hitting my wet face, and the sound of my own sobs that I tried to swallow so no one would hear. I ran across the lawn and past the pack houses and onto the hidden path that led into the old forest. The red moon hung over the trees like a bleeding eye.

Where could I go? I could not go home. My father would hear about it by morning, and somehow it would still be my fault.

There was only one place in the world where I felt safe.

The Weeping Spring was a small pond behind the ruins of the old mill. My mother used to take me there when I was little, before my father moved her out of the family rooms and made her a servant in her own house. She would sit me on the moss and sing to me in a language I never learned. When I got older, I came here alone every time I needed to put myself back together.

I reached the water and dropped to my knees. I pulled my coat tight around me and cried until my throat hurt.

Dorian was supposed to be the one good thing. He was supposed to be proof that someone could choose me.

When I ran out of tears, the forest slowly came back into focus. Wind moved in the branches. Leaves rattled across the ground. And far away, something howled.

It was not the friendly howl of a pack running for fun. This one was long and ugly and hungry.

Rogues.

Of course. On Blood Moon Night, the wild wolves with no pack and no mates grew restless. They came close to the borders, looking for trouble. I knew it was dangerous out here. I should not have come. I wiped my face on my sleeve and started to push myself up.

That was when I smelled it.

At first I thought I imagined it. Something warm and dark, like cedar smoke and rain on hot stone. It floated over the pond and wrapped around me, and my knees almost gave out.

Heat rushed through my body, from the base of my spine all the way to my fingertips. My skin felt too tight. My breath came fast. I gripped the moss with both hands and tried to understand what was happening to me.

This was a mating heat. I had read about it. Everyone had. But it was not possible. I had no wolf. I could not have a mate. I could not feel this.

Yet my whole body was leaning toward that smell like a plant leaning toward the sun.

Somewhere inside me, in that big, quiet house where something slept, a door creaked open. Just one inch.

I gasped. "What is this?"

No one answered. But the scent grew stronger, and it was coming closer, as if someone was running toward me through the trees.

I had to get home. I had to get away from here before the heat took what little sense I had left. I staggered to my feet.

"Well, well," said a rough voice behind me. "Look what we found, lads."

I spun around.

A man stood at the edge of the clearing. He was tall and thin, with a patchy beard and a scar that pulled up one side of his lip. His clothes were stiff with dirt. More shapes stepped out of the trees behind him. Six of them. Seven. They carried knives and coils of rope, and one of them had iron cuffs hanging from his belt.

They smelled of sweat and old blood. The stink cut through the beautiful scent in the air and made my stomach turn.

Rogues. Real ones.

"I was just leaving," I said. I tried to sound firm. My voice cracked in the middle.

"Why leave?" The scarred one took a long, slow breath through his nose, and a hungry smile opened on his face. "A girl in heat, alone in the woods on Blood Moon Night. I think the Goddess sent you to us."

The others laughed. They began to spread out, slowly, in a half circle. I looked left and saw a man blocking the path. I looked right and saw another stepping through the reeds. Behind me was only the water.

"Stay away from me," I said. I tried to growl the way wolves did. Only a pathetic squeak came out.

The scarred man laughed so hard he coughed. "Hear that, boys? She wants to bite us."

My heart slammed against my ribs. I knew no one would come. My father would not notice I was gone. Dorian was busy. The pack was drunk on celebration. I had no wolf to fight and no mate to save me. Just a coat and a pair of black underwear I had been so proud of.

The scarred man lunged. His fingers caught the hem of my coat and yanked me backward so hard I fell onto the wet moss. I kicked at him. He caught my ankle and dragged me across the ground, and tears burned in my eyes again. I screamed, and one of them clapped a filthy hand over my mouth.

"Quiet, pretty," he whispered. "You will wake the whole forest."

Then the air itself changed.

It was like the moment before lightning strikes. Every hair on my arms stood up. The laughter stopped. The rogues went still, heads turning toward the trees, nostrils flaring.

And a voice split the night, so deep and so furious that the leaves shook on the branches.

"LET HER GO."

The scent hit me like a wave. Cedar smoke. Rain on hot stone. Stronger than before, so strong my vision blurred and every nerve in my body lit up.

The hand fell away from my mouth. I lay there gasping on the moss and slowly turned my head.

At the edge of the clearing, between the black trunks of the trees, a man stood in the shadows. Tall. Broad shoulders. Dressed all in black. I could not see his face. But I felt his eyes on me, and they burned like they could see right through my skin.

The scarred rogue started to say something. The man took one step forward.

The rogue stopped talking.

And deep inside me, the quiet door that had opened one inch swung wide.