Chapter 4

Elara's POV

Kael didn't let go of my hand as we walked, and I didn't pull away either, even though every part of my upbringing told me that a woman who followed a stranger into the deep woods after dark was asking for whatever happened to her next.

Instead I kept waiting for that fear to win out over the strange calm that had settled into my chest since his fingers wrapped around mine.

"Where exactly are we going," I asked, because the silence between us had started to feel heavier than the mark burning quietly under my skin.

"Somewhere safer than an open forest with rogues still loose in it," he said, not slowing his pace, though he did glance back at me like he was checking whether I could keep up, which annoyed me more than it should have given that I was, in fact, struggling to keep up in a dress that had never been made for running through trees. "There's a house not far from here that belongs to me. No one will look for you there tonight."

"You have a house just sitting in the middle of the Ashwood woods."

"I have houses in a lot of places," he said, and there was something dry in the way he said it, almost like he was daring me to be impressed.

"Being feared by every pack in three territories has its advantages.

Nobody bothers checking what's on land they're too afraid to walk through."

I wanted to ask him more, about the curse the elders whispered about, about why a king who supposedly ruled an entire kingdom of Lycans was wandering the Ashwood woods alone at night instead of surrounded by guards, but the questions kept tangling in my throat every time I tried to force them out, so instead I asked the one thing that had been eating at me since the clearing.

"Do you think the mark is a mistake?"

He stopped walking then, and for a moment the only sound was the wind moving through the trees above us, cold enough that I could feel it through the thin fabric of my ruined dress, and when he finally looked at me his expression wasn't the guarded, careful mask he'd been wearing since we met, it was something that looked almost like he was asking himself the same question and hadn't liked any answer he'd come up with so far.

"I don't know what to call it yet," he admitted, "but I've lived long enough to know that the Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes carelessly, even when the things she does seem like mistakes to the people living through them, so whatever this is, Elara Ashwood, I doubt it happened by accident."

Hearing him say my full name, the same name Ryker had used like an insult a few hours earlier, did something strange to my chest, because Kael didn't say it like a judgment, he said it like he was trying to memorize the shape of it.

We reached the house sooner than I expected, tucked so far back into the trees that I would have walked right past it if he hadn't been leading me, a low stone cottage with dark green ivy crawling up one whole side of it, warm light glowing behind the curtains even though I hadn't seen him send anyone ahead to light them.

Inside, the air smelled like woodsmoke and something herbal I couldn't place, and an older woman was already waiting near the fireplace, her sharp eyes moving from Kael to me and back again with an expression that made it clear she had already guessed something was wrong before either of us said a word.

"You're bleeding," the woman said to Kael, though her gaze never left me for long, sliding down to my wrist like she could see straight through the sleeve covering the mark.

"It's not mine," Kael said. "This is Elara Ashwood. Elara, this is Nyra. She's the closest thing to a healer I trust with either of our lives, so whatever you're about to tell her, you can trust her with it too."

Nyra crossed the room and took my hand before I could think to pull it back, turning my wrist over with a gentleness that surprised me given how sharp her eyes had looked a moment ago, and the second she saw the mark, her whole body went still in a way that made the hair on my arms rise all over again.

"Moon above," she whispered, and it wasn't the kind of whisper people used when they were impressed, it was the kind people used when they were frightened and trying very hard not to show it. "Kael. Do you understand what you've done."

"I understand that I touched a stranger to check if she was injured and this happened," Kael said, and there was an edge in his voice now, something defensive underneath the calm. "I didn't do anything on purpose, Nyra."

"That mark isn't a mate bond," Nyra said, still holding my wrist like she was afraid to let go of it, and for the first time since the forest, I felt real fear crawl up my spine, sharper than anything Ryker's rejection had made me feel, because whatever Nyra saw in that mark clearly terrified her more than rogues or curses or any of the things Kael had already mentioned.

"This is older than any bond magic I've studied, this is a bloodline magic, Kael, the kind that hasn't shown itself in this world for hundreds of years."

"Bloodline magic," I repeated, my voice barely holding steady. "What does that mean."

Nyra looked up at me then, and the pity in her expression scared me even more than the fear had, because pity from a stranger usually meant bad news was coming, the kind of bad news that changed everything about a person's life whether they wanted it changed or not.

"It means, child," Nyra said slowly, like she was choosing every word with great care, "that you are not simply someone's fated mate.

If I'm right about what I'm seeing on your skin, you are the last living descendant of a bloodline every pack and every kingdom believed had died out generations ago, and if word of that gets out before we understand what it means, there won't be a single soul in this world, wolf or Lycan or otherwise, who won't want a piece of you for themselves."

I looked down at the mark on my wrist, the crescent moon wrapped in thorns, and for the first time since Ryker's rejection, the fear crawling through me had nothing to do with being called weak.

Behind us, the door of the cottage burst open, and a young man I'd never seen before stumbled inside, breathless, blood streaked across one side of his face.

"My King," he gasped, "you need to come now. Someone followed us from the Ashwood border, and they know exactly who she is."