CHAPTER FIVE: THE MARK THAT WAS NOT A BURN

I don’t know how else to explain it. It was just a normal fireplace, logs cracking, but after Jax said it, after “She’s just not a wolf,” the sound filled my whole head and I couldn’t hear the rain anymore.

I was looking at my wrist. At that stupid pale crescent I’d had since I was seven. I’d always thought it was a scar from falling off the tire swing. Mom told me it was a birthmark.

“White,” I whispered. “You said white.”

Jax was still kneeling in front of me. He hadn’t touched me since he showed me my wrist, like he was afraid if he touched me now I’d shatter.

“Amelia,” my mom said from the couch, her voice shaking. “Your grandma. My mom. Her name was Mara. She didn’t have a wolf either, not the way they mean here at Wolf Creek. The pack up north didn’t call themselves werewolves. They called themselves the first wolves.”

I swallowed. My throat was still raw from screaming in the barn.

“First wolves?”

“They’re born as wolves,” she said. “Not people who turn into wolves. Wolves who learn to be people. Do you understand the difference?”

I didn’t. I shook my head.

Jax answered for her, voice low. “We shift. Human to wolf, wolf to human. There’s always that split, that fight inside. The White Wolves don’t have that. They’re one thing. Whole. That’s why they don’t shift at eighteen. There’s nothing to shift into. They’re already what they are. They just wake up, when their body decides they’re safe enough to show it.”

My mom pulled her knees up onto the couch. She looked small in her yellow raincoat.

“Mara told me they turn white in their first winter. Not gray. Not brown. White like snow blindness. And their eyes stay. Even in human skin, their eyes stay wolf.”

“Like yours?” I asked without thinking.

Mom flinched.

“No. Not like mine. I’m only half. Like you. Half. My wolf never woke up either, because I never felt safe. Not after Harlan rejected me.”

She looked at Jax then, and there was so much guilt in that look I had to look away.

“Your mother never shifted because she was living in a pack that called her wolfless,” Jax said quietly. “She believed them. So her wolf stayed asleep to protect her. It’s what they do. They sleep until they’re claimed. Until someone sees them.”

He finally touched me. Just two fingers under my chin, tilting my face up so I had to look at him.

“That’s why Kaden couldn’t mark you, Amelia. That’s why the bond snapped and burned instead of sealing. An ordinary wolf trying to mark a White Wolf is like trying to hold lightning in his bare hands. It burns you both. It almost killed you tonight. Look at your neck.”

I reached up without thinking, and my fingers brushed the salve. Still cool, but underneath it the skin was raised and hot.

“So I’m what, a freak? Even more of a freak than they thought?”

“No.” His voice went hard. “You’re rare. You’re the only one left in Montana. Maybe the only one left south of Canada. The pack up north was hunted, because Alphas were afraid of them. Because a White Wolf Luna can make an Alpha ten times stronger. Or end him with one bite if he’s cruel.”

The room went quiet again except for the fire.

My mom stood and went to the kitchen, poured the tea that had gone cold down the sink. Her hands shook so hard the mug clanged against the metal.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice broke. “Eighteen years, Mom. Eighteen years I thought I was broken. I thought my wolf was shy. You let me think I was shy.”

“I was trying to protect you.” She spun around, tears finally spilling over. “If I told you what you were, you’d have asked questions. You’d have gone looking. And they would have found you. Harlan found out about my mother. That’s why he rejected me, Amelia. Not because I was wolfless. Because I was White blood. He was terrified of what I’d make his pups. He told the whole pack I was a genetic dead end so no one would want me.”

She came and sat next to me and grabbed both my hands.

“I wanted you to have a normal Shifting Ceremony. I wanted you to just be a late bloomer. I prayed every night you’d be a regular gray wolf like everyone else and you’d be safe.”

I stared at our hands. Hers small and scarred from cleaning houses. Mine still caked with mud under the nails from running.

“So Kaden—” I whispered.

“Kaden felt the White Wolf bond and mistook it for a normal mate bond,” Jax said. “White Wolf bonds don’t snap into place like ours do. They grow. Slowly. Like frost. He felt you getting stronger all winter and thought the Moon Goddess was telling him you were his Luna. But you were never his to claim. You were too much for him.”

That hurt more than it should have. Even after everything, hearing I was too much for Kaden stung.

“Then who can claim me?” The question came out before I could stop it, small and scared.

No one answered for a second.

Then Jax stood and walked back to the fireplace, and for the first time I saw what my mom had seen earlier. When the firelight hit his neck just right, under his beard, on the left side, there were four thin lines. White. Old. Healed, but raised.

Not a burn. Claws.

I stood without thinking. My sweatpants were too short, my feet bare. I walked to him.

“Jax.”

He didn’t move.

“What happened to your neck?”

He closed his eyes.

“Twelve years ago,” he said. “Your grandmother was still alive. She lived in a cabin past North Ridge. Harlan told the pack she was a crazy old woman who talked to crows. I was twenty. I used to bring her wood because Eliza asked me to. One night I found her shifted. White. Huge. Bigger than any wolf I’d ever seen. She was dying. Old age. And she was scared. She thought I was Harlan coming to finish the job.”

My mom made a choked sound behind me.

“She bit me? No. She marked me. Like this.” He touched his own neck. “Not a mate mark. A guardian mark. A White Wolf’s promise. It says protect my blood. Your grandma gave me this the night she died. She said, my daughter’s daughter is coming and she’ll be whiter than me and the boys will try to break her. Don’t let them.”

I reached out before I could think about it. My fingers, cold, touched those four white lines on his neck.

The second I touched them, something happened.

The burn on my own neck, that hot, smoking, awful rejection burn from Kaden, stopped hurting.

It went cool. Like someone had poured ice water over it.

And under my fingers, Jax’s old scar glowed. Just for a second. Faint white, like moonlight under his skin.

He sucked in a sharp breath and grabbed my wrist. Not hard, but fast, like I’d shocked him.

His gray eyes were wide, and they weren’t gray anymore. They were yellow. Wolf yellow. Glowing in the firelight.

“Amelia,” he whispered.

From behind us, my mom whispered, “Oh, Mara. You did it. She woke up.”

In my chest, that empty, bleeding place where Kaden had ripped the bond out didn’t howl.

It purred.