Chapter 3

Elara's POV

"What do you mean I have no idea what I did?" I pulled my wrist back against my chest, like I could hide the mark just by covering it. "You're the one who touched me."

He didn't answer right away, he was still staring at his own hand like it belonged to a stranger.

Behind us, the injured warrior groaned, and it snapped both of us out of whatever had just happened.

"Stay here," the man said, and this time it wasn't a request.

He turned and disappeared into the trees so fast I barely saw him move, and a moment later I heard voices, low and quick, someone giving orders in a tone that made it clear he was used to being obeyed.

I sat there in the dirt with my ruined dress and my shaking hands and tried to make sense of any of it.

A wolf twice the size of anything I'd ever seen.

A mark burned into my skin like a tattoo.

When he came back, two others were with him, both dressed in dark clothes I didn't recognize, no pack colors I knew.

They lifted the injured warrior between them, and one of them gave the stranger a look I couldn't read before they carried him off into the dark.

"Who are you?" I asked again, because he still hadn't answered the first time.

He crouched in front of me again, closer this time, studying my face like he was looking for something specific.

Up close his eyes weren't just dark, they had a ring of silver around the edge, faint, easy to miss unless you were staring, which I was.

"Kael," he said finally. "Kael Draven."

The name landed somewhere in my chest before my mind caught up to why it should matter.

I'd heard that name before, in stories told to scare pups into behaving, in whispered warnings from elders who didn't like talking about it in daylight.

"The Lycan King." My voice came out barely above a whisper. "You're supposed to be a myth."

"I get that a lot." Something almost like humor crossed his face, gone as fast as it came. "I promise I'm real, Unfortunately for both of us, apparently."

"Why unfortunately?"

He looked down at the mark on my wrist again, and whatever warmth had been in his voice a second ago disappeared completely.

"Because that mark isn't a normal mate mark," he said. "I've lived a very long time, Elara Ashwood, and I have never once seen a mark form like that on contact.

Not from a mate bond, Not from anything I understand."

"So what is it?"

"I don't know yet, and until I do, you're not safe going back to your pack alone tonight." He stood and offered his hand, and I stared at it like it might bite me.

"There are things in these woods worse than the rogues that already found you and I'd rather not find out if they're hunting you specifically."

"I have a home to go back to."

"You have a pack that let you walk into these woods alone the same night they let their Alpha's son humiliate you in front of everyone.

" His voice wasn't cruel when he said it, just cold. "I heard the shouting from half a mile out.

Word travels fast in these woods."

Heat rushed into my face, half shame, half anger. "You don't know anything about my pack."

"I know enough." He crouched back down slightly, bringing himself level with me instead of towering over me, and something about that small choice made it harder to stay angry.

"I'm not trying to hurt you, i'm only trying to understand what just happened between us, and I can't do that if something else gets to you first."

I looked down at the mark again, and it had stopped burning, but I could still feel it, warm under my skin, like it was listening to the conversation.

"If I come with you," I said slowly, "what happens after? When you figure out whatever this is?"

"I don't know that either." At least he was honest about it. "But I intend to find out before anyone else does.

There are people who would use a mark like this against both of us if word got out before we understood it ourselves."

Every instinct I had said this was reckless, that going anywhere with a stranger the pack told ghost stories about was exactly the kind of thing that got omegas killed in those same stories.

But going back meant walking into that gathering again, it meant facing Ryker's eyes again and the pack's whispers, meant being weak Elara who got rejected in front of everyone and then went running back home with nowhere else to go.

I put my hand in his.

The moment our skin touched again, the mark on both our wrists glowed faint silver in the dark.