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Chapter 97
publish date:
2026-08-07 02:01:19
Latest chapter
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 98
ZaraThe pull didn't feel like hands. It felt like the dark itself had decided to have an opinion about where I belonged, and its opinion was somewhere far away from Ryan.I hit something that wasn't ground, wasn't air, somewhere in between, and then I was standing again, upright, like whatever had taken me had set me down carefully instead of dropping me. That was worse, somehow. Careful meant intention. Careful meant I mattered enough to handle gently."Ryan!"My voice came back wrong, flattened, like the space around me was too small to hold an echo, even though every instinct in my body said the opposite was true, said this place went on forever in every direction.Nothing answered. I made myself breathe. In through the nose, four counts, out through the mouth, four counts, the way I'd taught myself back when panic used to own me instead of the other way around. It didn't help much. It never fully did. But it kept my knees from folding, and right now that was the only job that mat
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 97
RyanThe lights went out one at a time, and I counted them without meaning to, some old instinct in me needing to measure the dark the way I'd measure a threat, how fast it was coming, how much room we had left before it swallowed the room whole.Twelve...eleven and ten."Ryan." Zara's hand was still locked in mine, and her voice had gone thin in a way I didn't like, thin the way people sound right before their legs stop working. "It's still doing it. Look at her face."I was looking. I hadn't stopped looking since the light flickered and I saw my own mate's features settle over a stranger's bones for half a second, gone so fast I could almost convince myself I'd imagined it. Almost."I see it," I said. "Stay behind me.""That's not going to help.""Humor me."She didn't move behind me. She never did, not once in the months I'd known her, and some part of me that wasn't scared out of my mind found that funny, that I kept saying it anyway, kept hoping this would be the time.The woman
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 96
ZaraThe ground opened like an eye and it was not a crack, not a fissure, an eye, and I understood that the moment it happened, some instinct older than tonight telling me exactly what I was looking at even as my body refused to process it. The stone beneath us peeled back in a slow spiral, wet and dark and gleaming, and beneath it was more dark, except this dark had a shape to it, a depth that pulled at my eyes the way a held breath pulls at your lungs.Ryan's arm came around my waist before I'd even started to fall."I've got you." His voice was strained, ribs screaming with every word, but his grip didn't waver. "Don't look down.""I can't not look down, Ryan, it's everywhere."The floor kept widening beneath us, an inch at a time, patient the way it had been patient all night, like it had already decided this was going to happen and was only waiting for us to accept it too. My boots found less and less stone to stand on. Ryan's found none at all on one side, and I heard him grunt
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 95
RyanThe light didn't so much appear as arrive, like it had always been there and the dark had just been pretending otherwise, and I put myself between it and Zara before I'd even decided to move."Don't," I said, though I wasn't sure who I was talking to. Her. The wall, the thing that had just spoken with her mother's patience and no mother at all behind it."Ryan, I see it too." Her hand was still in mine, and it was shaking, but her voice had steadied out some. "It's not attacking.""Yet.""Yet," she agreed.The seam widened, slow, unhurried, the way a door opens when whoever's on the other side already knows you're not going anywhere. Light spilled through it, pale and wrong, not warm like sun and not cold like moon, just light, like something had described the concept to itself and gotten close but not quite there.My ribs screamed when I shifted my weight, and I let them. Pain was information. Pain meant I was still mine."Talk to me," I said. "What are you feeling right now? No
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 94
ZaraDarkness came and went in waves, and every time it pulled back I was somewhere different, Ryan's arms under my knees, his heartbeat slamming against my ear, the world tilting sideways as he ran."Stay with me." His voice, low, cracked at the edges. "Zara, please.""I'm trying." My own voice sounded wrong to me, thick, like it was coming from somewhere underwater.The heat under my skin hadn't stopped since the stairwell. It moved in pulses, up through my chest, into my throat, and every pulse brought another flash of the thing I'd seen when my eyes went red. A room that wasn't a room. A mouth with no bottom."Where are we going?""East door. Marcus said east door.""Marcus helped us?""Don't talk. Save it."I wanted to tell him I didn't have anything left to save it for, that whatever was happening to me felt less like dying and more like being rearranged, piece by piece, into something that wouldn't need breath the same way. But talking took less out of me than thinking, so I ke
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 93
RyanThe dark took her out of my arms in pieces, her weight sagging, her breath gone ragged against my collarbone, and I did the only thing that made any sense in that moment. I held on harder."Zara. Zara, stay with me.""I'm here." Her voice came out thin, stretched over something enormous. "It's so loud, Ryan, why is it so loud...""What's loud? Tell me what you're hearing."She didn't answer. Her whole body arched against me, and the red light under her skin flared bright enough that I saw my own hands for half a second, saw the stairwell, saw Jude's silhouette standing very still above us like he was watching something he didn't want to blink through."Someone light a torch." My voice came out a snarl I didn't have to fake. "Now.""Patience." Jude's voice, infuriatingly calm. "This part doesn't like light.""I don't care what this part likes.""You should. It's the only reason you're both still breathing."Zara convulsed again, and I dropped to my knees with her, one arm locked a
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 4
Zara"Rude" I mummured. Judging from the kind of person Alpha Ryan was, it wasn't hard to see that he was a man of pride who didn't beg. He saw begging as a way of being weak and left for me, I was ready to break him until the only thing left for him to do was to beg. I closed my eyes for a bit, th
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 3
RyanShe was here in flesh and blood. The last living Eserai.When my elders told me about an Eserai at first, I was sure they had gone mad. It was impossible. My seer confirmed that the Eserais had been wiped out by my father’s reckless drinking from them, and his abuse.But the moment I saw her, I
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 2
ZaraWith my hands pinned to my back, I dragged my legs to let them carry as far as I could go, but I was a fool to think they would let me off so easily.Someone was behind me with light steps, almost like they were gliding over the air. Freaking werewolf speed. Everything happened in a blur, and
Marked by the Alpha Chapter 1
ZaraThe email didn’t make sense. I stared at it a few more times, certain there had to be a mistake or some sort of glitch that would disappear if I had to blinked hard enough.Anxiety had me pulling out my phone for the umpteenth time to read through the email, word for word to make sure it wasn’t
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