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Chapter 40: Ghosts in Daylight
publish date:
2026-09-19 18:30:58
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Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 41: What His Hands Remember
CELLAIt happens without warning, the way the worst of them always have, snapping across the fragile calm we'd only just managed to rebuild.We're still sitting close, his hand loose in mine, when something shifts behind his eyes so fast I don't have time to brace for it. His pupils blow wide, his grip on my hand suddenly crushing rather than gentle, and before I can pull back or call his name he's moving, faster than his healing body should allow, closing the distance between us and driving me back against the wall with a force that knocks the air clean out of my chest."Aeden." I gasp it out, my hands coming up instinctively against his chest, though he doesn't so much as register the touch. "Aeden, it's me, it's Cella."He doesn't hear me. His eyes are fixed on my face with a horror that has nothing to do with recognition, something wild and terrified moving behind them, and his hand closes hard around my throat, not choking, not yet, but close enough that panic floods cold and fas
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 40: Ghosts in Daylight
CELLAIt starts small enough that I almost miss it.We're back in his room an hour after leaving the study, the weight of everything Simon and Darian laid out still sitting heavy between us, and Aeden goes still in the middle of a sentence, his gaze sliding past my shoulder toward the empty corner of the room with an intensity that has nothing to do with anything actually there."Aeden." I keep my voice level, though something in his sudden stillness has already set my pulse racing. "What are you looking at.""Kael." He says the name flat, almost conversational, still staring at the empty corner. "He's standing right there. Bleeding from where the demon king killed him. He keeps asking me why I didn't stop it."My stomach drops. "There's no one there, Aeden. Kael isn't here."His eyes finally shift back to me, confusion flickering across his face, quick and genuine. "He was just standing there. I watched him. I could see the blood on his shirt, the exact place the wound was.""I belie
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 39: Fragments of Sight
CELLAThe vision comes without warning, the way they've come since the Veil took its price from me, no warning tremor, no familiar pull behind my eyes the way visions used to announce themselves before I lost most of what made me a clairvoyant worth fearing.I'm sitting beside Aeden's cot when it hits, his hand still loosely curled around mine from the night before, and one moment I'm watching morning light creep weak across the floor and the next the room simply isn't there anymore, replaced by darkness so complete it takes my mind a full, disoriented second to understand I'm not blind, I'm somewhere else entirely.Ground, first. Scorched, cracked, radiating a heat that has no business existing beneath open sky. Then a sound, low and rhythmic, something that isn't quite breathing and isn't quite a heartbeat, rising from underneath the earth itself rather than from any living thing standing on top of it. I try to turn, try to see more of wherever this is, and the vision resists me the
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 38: What the Anchor Sites Remember
SIMONThe scouts come back from the northern ridge two hours before dawn, and I know before they've even dismounted that whatever they found out there isn't the kind of report that waits for a decent hour."Anchor sites don't do this." Ferris, the younger of the pair, still has ash smudged along one forearm where he clearly touched something he shouldn't have, and his voice carries a rough edge of fear he's not bothering to hide from me the way he might from someone he outranked. "We've patrolled that ridge a dozen times since the demon king fell. Cold ground, dead ground, nothing living within a stone's throw of the old circle. Tonight the whole clearing was warm, Simon. Warm like something underneath it hasn't stopped breathing.""Show me." I'm already reaching for my own gear, some old instinct settling cold and familiar into my chest, the particular readiness that comes from years spent trusting a scout's unease over whatever comforting explanation might be easier to believe inste
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 37: The Weight of a Formal Word
CELLAI write the refusal myself, three days after the courtier leaves, sitting alone in Mira's small office because it's the only room in the estate with a desk and enough quiet to keep my hand from shaking while I compose it.I do not soften it. I've spent twenty-two years learning exactly how much softening my father's court requires before a woman's word is taken seriously at all, and I find, somewhere in the careful anger of drafting this letter, that I no longer have the patience left to perform that particular courtesy.To my father, Alpha Ardentis. I decline the proposed match. My bond stands, whatever legal standing your court chooses to grant it. I am not an asset to be negotiated once proven useful, nor a complication to be managed once inconvenient. I am your daughter, whatever that has ever meant to you, and I will not spend what I survived to purchase a marriage neither of us actually wants for me. Cella.Mira reads it over my shoulder once I've finished, her expression
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 36: Proven
CELLAThe messenger arrives at midday, dressed in Ardentis colors I haven't seen this close in weeks, and something in my chest goes cold and still the moment Simon comes to fetch me from the corridor outside Aeden's room."He's asking for you by name." Simon's voice carries the particular carefulness of a man delivering news he suspects won't be welcome. "Says he comes from your father's court. Darian's granted him audience in the main hall, but he wanted you told first, in case you'd rather not attend.""I'll attend." I say it before I've fully decided it, though the moment the words leave me I know I mean them. Whatever my father wants, I would rather hear it directly than have it filtered through someone else's account of my own life.The man waiting in the main hall is older than I expect, silver-templed, dressed in the kind of understated finery that marks a senior courtier rather than a common envoy, and he inclines his head with exactly the correct depth of respect the moment
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 2
CELLA’S POVThe moment my feet touched the muddy ground, I ran.Mud splashed up my legs as I moved, but I didn’t slow down. My heart raced, loud in my chest, and it felt like the nightmare again, except this time nothing was chasing me.This time, I was running because I chose to.After a few steps
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 1
CELLA'S POVI didn’t know exactly what I was running from, but I knew that if I stopped, I would die.My legs moved on their own accord, carrying me forward like I was being pulled by some invisible force.Then I heard a howl.I shook my head, refusing to look back. It couldn’t be real but it came
Marked by the forbidden mate Chapter 6: The Voice
CELLA'S POV"I reject the bond." My voice shook, but I forced myself to continue. "I reject you as my mate. I refuse to be tied to an omega. I refuse to accept this... this fate."The bond pulled at my chest, screaming in protest. Sable howled inside my mind, her claws raking against my ribs until
Marked by the forbidden mate CHAPTER 5: BEHIND ME
CELLA'S POV"I am answering it. By surviving." He started walking, and I had no choice but to follow or be left behind. "I'm someone who knows how to stay alive. If you want the same, you'll come with me. If not..." He shrugged. "The forest is that way."I stood frozen, watching him walk away.He's
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