A Big Mistake

Knox.

The pain is easing.

Slowly. Like the grip on my hand has been reduced slighty but the hand still remains.

My hand still throbs but I can close my fingers properly now and the burning has dropped from unbearable to manageable and I keep my grip on her jaw and look at her and wait for it to make sense.

It doesn't make sense.

"What are you doing to me," I say again.

Tessa's jaw tightens under my hand. Her eyes are doing two things at once — fear and anger, fighting each other, neither winning.

"I'm not doing anything," she says.

"Try again."

"I'm not." Her voice is clipped. Controlled. "You're the one who marked me. If anyone is doing something it's you."

I look at the mark on her wrist.

It's fading.

Not gone. But fading — the flame shape that was vivid orange two nights ago has gone pale, almost translucent, like something draining out of it.

I look at the mark on my own hand.

Same thing.

I look back at her.

"What does that mean," I say.

Her jaw tightens again. She's biting something back. I can see it, the thing she wants to say fighting with the self-preservation instinct that keeps telling her to be careful.

The self-preservation instinct loses.

"It means," she says, "that you should have done your research before making such a hasty choice."

I go still.

"Your desperation to have leverage over my father must have—"

My grip tightens moving from her jaw to her neck.

My nails press into her flesh and she makes a small hissing sound and stops talking and I lean down until I'm at her level.

"Finish that sentence," I say quietly.

Her throat moves as she swallows, while her eyes water slightly — not crying, just the automatic response to pain — and she holds my gaze and says nothing.

I wait.

"You marked me with the debt mark," she says finally. Her voice is rougher now but it doesn't shake. "Do you know what that means? Do you actually know what that mark does?"

I say nothing.

"Until the debt is paid," she says, "you can't harm me. And I can't harm you." She holds my eyes. "The mark protects both parties until the debt is settled."

I stare at her.

"So when your guard hit me," she says, "the mark—"

"Transferred," I say.

Not a question. I already know. I felt it — the exact moment his hand connected with her face I felt it in my palm and I told myself it was coincidence and it wasn't.

It wasn't.

I release her taking a step back.

She grabs her throat immediately, the place where my nails were, pressing her fingers against the marks there. She coughs once. Her eyes don't leave mine.

I look at my hand.

I marked her two nights ago in a hallway because she owed me a life and I wanted something to collect on. I pressed the Alvarez mark into her skin without thinking about it because I've done it before and it's never been complicated and she was a wolfless girl who'd wandered somewhere she shouldn't be.

I didn't think much about it.

I didn't think about what the mark actually does because I have never once needed to think about it. No one has ever explained the debt mark to me because no one ever imagined I would use it on something I intended to harm.

She had it all planned out.

The moment she offered to take Alaric's place, she knew exactly what she was doing.

She knew I couldn't harm her while the debt remained unpaid, and she used that knowledge to put herself between Alaric and the council.

She'd stood in front of everyone, daring me to accept her offer, knowing I couldn't punish her the way I'd intended.

And I'd fallen for it.

I'd been so determined to make her pay that I hadn't stopped to consider whether the mark I'd placed on her would bind me just as tightly as it bound her.

She'd outsmarted me with my own mistake.

A wolfless scholarship student had managed to corner the Alpha King without lifting a finger.

"You tricked me," I say.

She looks at me, her hand is still at her throat.

And then, for some reason, I start laughing.

I don't find any of this funny. I've just bound myself to a girl I can't harm, and now the debt mark is turning my own mistake against me.

I drag a hand down my face, still laughing under my breath.

Tessa stares at me like I've lost my mind.

Maybe I have.

I shake my head, turn around, and walk out, leaving her there.

…

Levana is right outside the gate.

She was waiting. Of course she was.

The moment she sees me, she straightens, her expression hardening. She looks furious, and judging by the way she glares at me, she's got plenty to say but she doesn’t instead, she runs past me into the courtyard.

I keep walking.

"Knox."

Landon falls into step on my left. Caius on my right. Both of them have the sense to stay quiet for exactly four seconds.

"What happened in there," Landon says.

"Not now."

"The elders are going to want—"

"I said not now."

Caius opens his mouth but the look I give him causes him to huff but he doesn’t press on.

Good.

I need space and silence. And, preferably, a way to undo the most idiotic decision I've made in years.

I reach the end of the corridor and stop.

Someone is standing ahead of me.

My father.

Darius Alvarez stands with his cane resting against one leg, his face turned in my direction. His eyes have been useless for two years, ever since the fight that took his sight.

But blindness has never made him less dangerous.

He knows the sound of my footsteps. He knows the rhythm of my breathing. He can tell when I'm angry before I open my mouth.

And somehow, he never misses when he strikes.

His hand moves and the slap lands across my face before I can react.

My head turns with the force of it.

Silence follows.

I slowly face him again, my jaw tightening as the sting spreads across my cheek.

My ears ring, and my vision blurs for a moment. I clench my fists, my nails digging into my palms, then shake my head to clear it.

A second later, I look at my father again.

"Knox," he says.

"Father."

"Give me three reasons," he says, very quietly, "why I shouldn't do away with you right now."