Reborn Before the Mark: I Married His Wolfless Uncle

Blood made the stone slick beneath Lorelai’s palms. She dragged herself forward anyway. The door stood barely ten feet away, moonlight cutting through the narrow opening beyond it. Ten feet.

She had crossed battlefields beside Caelan. Ten feet should not have been impossible. Her arms gave out. Pain tore through her side, and her cheek struck the floor.

The silver blade had gone in below her ribs, but the wound was not what had stolen the strength from her limbs. Aria had poisoned the wine first.

Bitter metal still coated Lorelai’s tongue, and a terrible cold spread outward from her stomach while her fingers stiffened against the stone. The blade only ensured the death would be blamed on the war.

Blood pushed between her fingers. Behind her, silk whispered.

“You were always too trusting,” Aria said.

Lorelai did not turn. She already knew that beautiful, composed face.

She had seen it across the Court of Consorts for years—always nearest Caelan, while four other women learned to smile around the marks he gave them. He had sworn those marks meant nothing.

Lorelai was still his Luna, still his true mate, still the first woman he had chosen. As if choice had belonged to her after she accepted him. Her fingers scraped over the scar at her neck.

His mark. Once, it had burned with belonging. Now it pulsed faintly while she died alone. Karl Ashborne had died three nights ago. The wolfless uncle. The unwanted firstborn.

The man the rogues followed without question.

A diplomatic summons had drawn him to Blackwater Ford. Vampires had been waiting. By sunrise, his head had been sent back to Greyhaven. By sunset, Greyhaven was burning.

Lorelai had watched the smoke rise while Moonridge’s gates remained closed. Caelan had called it a rogue problem. Aria had urged caution from his side. Then she had come for Lorelai.

With Karl dead, Greyhaven destroyed, and war beginning, no one would question the death of a neglected Luna. The door blurred. Lorelai pulled herself another inch.

She had loved Caelan before the mark. Before she gave him her body and believed the bond made betrayal impossible. Forty days. The thought came with vicious clarity.

There had been forty-two days between the mate bond awakening and the night they consummated it. Forty days before his teeth closed over her neck and sealed her future. If she had those days again—

Aria’s footsteps stopped behind her.

“You should have accepted what you were,” she murmured. “A placeholder.”

Lorelai closed her eyes. Not again. The world vanished. Air slammed into her lungs. Lorelai surged upright, a scream trapped behind her teeth. No blood. No stone corridor.

Morning light spilled across pale bed curtains. A fire snapped in the hearth. Her room at Ashborne Keep stood around her. Her room. Before the marriage. Her hand flew to her side.

Smooth linen. Unbroken skin. Then her neck. Nothing. No scar. No mate mark. No proof that Caelan had ever claimed her.

Her wolf crashed awake inside her, confused and frantic, reaching for the bond. A living thread pulled somewhere beyond the room—bright, unfinished.

Caelan. Lorelai stumbled from the bed and struck the washstand. The mirror caught her face, pale and alive. Alive. She seized the calendar card beside the lamp. The date stared back at her.

The bond had awakened two days ago. The private ceremony was scheduled in forty days. Forty days before she would have gone willingly to Caelan’s rooms.

Before sex, acceptance, and the mark made the bond indissoluble. Someone knocked.

“Lorelai?” a maid called. “The Alpha asked for you at breakfast.” She looked at the door. Karl still lived. Greyhaven still stood.

And Aria had not yet become untouchable. Lorelai dressed with hands that shook only once.

By the time she entered Garrick Ashborne’s private council room, she had buried the panic beneath a single decision. Caelan stood near the long table, impatience tightening his mouth.

He looked painfully young. Handsome, certain, untouched by what he would become. When he saw her, the impatience eased from his mouth. The mate bond pulled. Her wolf answered with a wounded sound.

“Where were you?” Caelan stepped toward her. “I sent for you twice.” Lorelai stopped beyond his reach.

Garrick watched from the head of the table. “You asked to speak before the household gathered.”

“Yes.”

Caelan frowned. “About what?”

No speech could hold years of grief, humiliation, and blood. So she used the only words that mattered.

“I, Lorelai Jones, reject you, Caelan Ashborne, as my mate.” Silence struck first. Then pain. The bond tore through her chest like claws between her ribs.

Lorelai folded against the table while her wolf howled for the destiny she had refused. Caelan staggered as if she had hit him.

“What did you say?”

Lorelai forced herself upright. Sweat chilled her spine. “I reject the mate bond.”

His face had gone white. “Why?”

Because you would promise me forever and divide it among five women. Because you would let Greyhaven burn. Because your love would become another word for ownership. None of that had happened yet.

“I do not choose it,” she said.

Caelan crossed the space between them. “You’re in pain. You don’t know what you’re saying.” His hand reached for her. Lorelai put a step between them. That stopped him more completely than a blow.

Garrick rose. “A rejection cannot be spoken lightly.”

“It was not.”

“You understand what this will cost you? Your position here. Protection. The future promised to you as Caelan’s mate.”

“Yes.”

Caelan looked at his father. “She’s frightened. Give her time.”

“I have had enough time.” Garrick’s eyes narrowed, but Lorelai held his stare.

“Send me to Greyhaven,” she said.

Caelan gave a disbelieving laugh. “The rogue settlement?”

“I can work. I can keep records, manage stores, negotiate supplies. I won’t be a burden.”

“You think Karl will take you?” Caelan demanded. “Those people won’t obey a sheltered girl from Ashborne Keep.”

“I did not ask to be obeyed.”

Garrick came around the table slowly. “Greyhaven is not exile in name only. The pack will not recognize you. Moonridge law will not protect you there.”

“I understand.”

Not entirely. But she understood the graves waiting if she did nothing. Garrick studied her until Caelan’s breathing became the loudest sound in the room.

“At Crownspire, your mother died saving my life,” he said. “I promised she would never leave a daughter unprotected.” Lorelai’s throat tightened at Miriam’s name.

“Then let me choose the protection.”

“You have.” His answer was too quiet. Garrick returned to his chair and rested both hands on its carved back.

“I will permit you to leave Ashborne Keep and reside in Greyhaven.”

Caelan turned sharply. “Father—”

“On one condition.” Blood beat once, hard, at Lorelai’s throat. Garrick’s gaze did not shift.

“You will marry my brother Karl.”