Chapter Two — The Morning After the Mark - 1

The sky over Elaris was the color of wet steel when the car dropped Evelyn at the Cross mansion. Morning sat on the marble steps like frost; the fountain in the front courtyard coughed thin ribbons of water that sounded colder than they looked. Staff held the door, faces polite and blank, and she moved through them like a shadow.

The world had already decided what last night meant. She could feel it buzzing in her phone, see it in the way the gate camera turned with a soft mechanical whine, in the way a delivery drone paused a beat too long before drifting on. But inside her, nothing was decided. Something new pressed against her heartbeat, a steady second rhythm that didn’t belong entirely to her.

She went straight upstairs, past the pale portraits and the places where her mother insisted the lilies go every spring, and closed her bedroom door. The click of the latch let her lungs expand again. She leaned her forehead to the wood, eyes shut, breathing until the tremor in her hands faded.

In the bathroom mirror, she looked like herself and not herself: hair slightly tangled, eyes tired, a faint flush high on her cheeks. No mark. No bruise. No proof. She touched her throat anyway, fingers searching for something her eyes couldn’t find.

It was quiet enough to hear the heating system sigh through the vents. Quiet enough to hear her own pulse thrum in her ears.

She turned the shower on and stepped beneath the water. Heat drifted over her shoulders and collarbone, turned to steam against the cooler air. She stood there until her skin went numb to the temperature and the glass fogged. It didn’t wash the feeling away. If anything, the steam made the memory clearer—the press of his breath near her skin, the way his control thinned until a roughness edged his voice.

You shouldn’t be here.

Neither should he. Neither should any of it.

She dressed in a soft gray sweater and black trousers and opened the window to let the wind in. Elaris smelled different in the morning—wet concrete, coffee, rain—clean enough to cut through the metallic thread she kept catching at the back of her throat. It didn’t disappear. It only softened.

Her phone vibrated. She didn’t check it. Not yet.

Downstairs, somewhere past the gallery, her mother’s voice poured orders into the day. “No, not those flowers. And get the press list from Vincent—yes, Evelyn will be ready. No, I don’t care what Valehart PR says, we’re not moving our timeline.” The words were smooth, practiced, aimed like little knives.

Evelyn slipped out the back instead, to the garden that had raised her more gently than this house ever had.

The garden was damp and quiet. Dew hung on the hedges like glass beads. The fountain in the center sent up a soft steady sound that made her shoulders loosen. She took the long path along the east wall, brushing her fingers over the rosemary and the pale lavender, breathing until the new rhythm under her heart folded into hers instead of pushing against it.

“Skipping breakfast already?”

The voice was warm and familiar and came with a smile she could hear before she saw it. She looked up.

Adrian stood at the bend in the path, hands in his coat pockets, hair catching a streak of weak sunlight that had found a break in the cloud. He wasn’t supposed to be real here, not in this early quiet, but there he was—easier than the memory of him, sharper than the rumors about him were willing to admit.

“You’re early,” she said, because that was safer than why are you here.

“I was told to be.” His mouth tipped wryly. “Valehart diplomacy, remember? We show up before the cameras do.”

He came closer. The path was narrow and the hedges were high, and for a second it felt like they were back in the tree-lined alley outside their old school, where he’d waited after classes in a too-big blazer with scuffed shoes and a bruise he tried to pretend wasn’t there.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” he said more softly. “Figured you wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t have anything to say.”

“That’s never stopped the city.” He angled his head toward the house. “Or your mother.”

A breath left her that might have been a laugh if anything inside her was looser. “You could have texted anyway.”

He looked at her, and the teasing went out of his face. “I didn’t want to add to the noise.”

They stood there with the fountain behind them and the faint traffic hush beyond the back gate. He had a different scent than his cousin—no iron in it, nothing dangerous; cedar, maybe, and the clean paper and ink of too many boardrooms. It didn’t catch at the edges of her pulse the way the other did. It didn’t change her breathing.

“It’s real, isn’t it?” he asked, too gently.

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I don’t know what it is.”

Adrian’s jaw shifted. “I do.” He looked away at the hedge like there might be a test answer written in leaves. “We have words for it. Old ones. Words your papers would call superstition.”

“Then tell me in new ones.”

His shoulders rose, fell. “Instinct. Bond. A mark the body makes when the mind fails to keep up.”

“And you think it… happened?”

“I think the city will say it did, even if it didn’t. And I think if it did, you should have been given a choice.”

The last line carried more heat than he meant it to. She watched that heat, the way it climbed his cheeks and then bled out of them when he caught himself.

“You were there last night?” she asked.

“No.” He wet his lips, shook his head once. “I heard after. Everyone did. Elaris whispers the same language when it’s hungry enough.”

Hurt flashed, quick and unguarded, then he tucked it away. “I shouldn’t have let them push you near him in the first place.”

“You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“You think I haven’t tried stopping things for you before?”

She remembered fists that weren’t his and the way he’d stood between her and the locker row anyway; the way he’d taken detention for a fight she started; the way he’d taken detention again for another one, because she didn’t know when to stop when someone called her cheap. She swallowed.

“Adrian—”

He cut in, softer. “I’m not here to ask you for anything. I’m here because you looked like you couldn’t breathe on the balcony last night. And because Lucien looks at problems like they’re made to be solved by force. And because our grandmother—” a ghost of humor— “likes to make messy things neat by snapping them in half.”

“Helena invited us to breakfast,” she said.

He huffed. “She doesn’t invite. She arranges.” He glanced toward the house. “You should know—there’s going to be an announcement. A temporary one. It gets the press to stop guessing long enough for PR to write their version of your life.”

“Engagement,” Evelyn said, testing how the word sat in her mouth. It didn’t fit. “One month.”

Adrian’s mouth went tight. “That’s what I heard.”

“And if I say no?”

He looked at her then—really looked—and in that look was the boy in the too-big blazer and the man who’d learned how to use a knife without getting blood on his cuffs. “They will do it without you.”

The fountain’s steady water broke once, as if someone had dropped a coin. She didn’t remember moving, but her hands had curled into the sleeves of her sweater, hiding the tremor there.

Adrian’s voice gentled. “Let me help.”

“With what?”

“With making sure you don’t get eaten alive while my family pretends they’re not wolves.”

A breath. “Thank you,” she said, and meant it.

He tilted a half-smile. “Don’t thank me yet. This gets ugly.”

“Uglier than this?” She gestured vaguely toward the house, toward the city beyond it, toward the moon still faint over the roofs.

“Different ugly.” He started to say more; his phone buzzed; the moment thinned. He glanced down at the name, and something in his jaw hardened in a way she didn’t recognize. “I have to go.”

“Of course.”

He took a step back, then one forward again like he’d changed his mind. When he spoke, he kept his voice low. “If anyone pressures you today, don’t agree to anything without me there.”

“I can handle pressure.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”

He went, long strides down the gravel path, sunlight flashing on the edge of his cufflink before the hedges swallowed him. The air felt bigger when he was gone, and colder.

By noon, the world had her new name ready.

WOLF HEIR CLAIMS HUMAN BRIDE
CROSS DAUGHTER, VALEHART HEIR, MIDNIGHT SUITE — WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
MOONBOUND OR MISTAKE?

The headlines multiplied; the footage played on loops that made her face into a symbol she didn’t recognize. Shots of her walking out of the Valehart estate with Lucien beside her, his hand at the small of her back as if that contact meant protection and not control. The camera caught an angle where they seemed closer than they were. Someone slowed it down and added music. Someone else cropped it into a hundred tiny squares and put text over the top that said fate.

Her mother came in, carrying a stack of printed talking points like a prize. “Smile,” she said. “We’re trending.”

“This is not a celebration.”

“It is leverage,” her mother corrected. “I have lunch with the board at two. I’ll need you at the Valehart estate by three. Wear the navy. It reads well in photographs.”

“I’m not a prop,” Evelyn said, not sure she believed it.

“You are a Cross,” her mother said. “That’s the only part that matters.”

The door closed behind her. The room’s edges felt too sharp after that. Evelyn sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the folded navy dress on the chair until the seams blurred. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, breathed slowly, and when the blur faded, decided if they were going to script her then she would at least edit.

She changed into the navy because it would save a fight, then added a thin silver chain that wasn’t on the list and left her hair not quite as they wanted it. Small rebellions were still rebellions.

The Valehart estate had always reminded her of a museum. In daylight it was worse—cooler, brighter, every reflective surface catching the smallest movements. Security men watched without looking like they were watching. Cameras winked in the corners like eyes. The air smelled faintly of pine and something sharper under it.

Helena waited in a glass-walled room with a view of the city. She wore black like a signature and a brooch in the shape of a stylized wolf head. Her posture was perfect. So was her smile.

“Evelyn,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

“I was told,” Evelyn said.

“Most good choices are made that way.” Helena gestured to a chair. “Sit.”

Evelyn sat. The chair was colder than it looked.

Lucien stood near the window, back to them, hands clasped behind him. If not for the faint rise and fall of his shoulders, he could have been a statue. When he turned, the silver edge in his eyes had dulled to something that could pass for human. It didn’t fool her body. The air changed when he looked at her—tightened, warmed. The thread under her heartbeat pulled taut, as if answering to something in him.

Helena watched them both watching each other. “Here is what will happen,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “There will be an engagement. Temporary. One month. It calms the press, stabilizes the market, and gives us time to… review what occurred.”

“What occurred,” Evelyn repeated, not deciding whether to laugh.

Helena’s mouth curved just enough to be called compassion from a distance. “I understand you must be overwhelmed. But this is bigger than either of you.”

Evelyn held her gaze. “No. It isn’t.”

A beat of silence. Helena’s eyes cooled a degree. “You will be compensated. Your family will be protected.”

“My family pushed me toward this,” Evelyn said, even and quiet. “I’m not here for their protection.”

Helena tipped her head, as if adjusting a painting’s frame. “Then name what you want.”

Evelyn hadn’t planned to, but the list arrived anyway, clear as if she’d written it in the car. “My terms are simple. One month, as you said. No public appearances without my consent. No statements from your PR team with my name unless I approve the language. No physical contact in front of cameras. And no attempt to—” she searched for a word that wouldn’t taste like ash— “leverage this to change legal status without discussion.”

Helena’s brows lifted, amused. “You speak like counsel.”

“I speak like someone who doesn’t want to be eaten,” Evelyn said.

Helena considered her, then looked past her to Lucien. “Well?”

Lucien hadn’t spoken yet. He stood like the room made a sound only he could hear. When he did speak, his voice was steady, the grate sanded out of it. “Agreed,” he said.

Evelyn’s pulse stuttered before it evened again. It was easier to breathe when he sounded like this. It felt like a lie anyway.

Helena’s smile sharpened. “Very well. We’ll send over the documents by the hour. There will be a brief statement at five, photographs at six. You may leave through the east corridor to avoid the—” she gestured vaguely, meaning the world.

Evelyn rose. The thread inside her tugged again, a small, insistent pull toward the man by the window. She ignored it. “One more thing.”

Helena waited.

“If you try to spin me,” Evelyn said, calm, “I will spin back. And I’m lighter on my feet than you think.”

Helena’s smile didn’t move, but something like appreciation flickered in her eyes. “Oh, I don’t underestimate dancers.”

The meeting was done. Evelyn turned toward the door. Lucien didn’t move, but the space between them did—thinning, warming, as if the room itself recognized a fault line. She reached the threshold and stopped without meaning to. The pull inside her held steady. If she turned, his eyes would be on her. If she didn’t, she’d still know.

Something in the glass wall caught the light just then, a flare that made her blink. When her vision cleared, she went, because leaving was the only way to prove she could.

The east corridor bled into a smaller hall with fewer cameras. She took it too fast and had to catch herself on a column to stop. Her breath went out in a quiet hah, her palm cool on the stone. Her phone buzzed again: a stack of missed calls, three from unknown numbers, one from Clara, and a text from her mother that said smile at five. She put the phone back in her pocket without answering any of it.

“Miss Cross.”

The voice behind her was careful. Security. She didn’t turn until he said, “Your car is ready.”

“Thank you.”