Chapter 3

Faela

I ran.

The pavement was slick and my shoes kept slipping, but I didn't stop. His voice was still in my ears, those words punching through the night air behind me.

“I marked her.”

“She’ll die!”

“I swear I'll kill her.”

I pressed my hand over my mouth and ran harder.

The streets were empty. Every shadow looked like a wolf. Every gust of wind sounded close, and I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting green eyes in the dark.

Rogue. He was a rogue. It made perfect sense. Rogues lived outside pack law, feral and violent, and everyone knew what the worst of them did when they found a fated mate. A mate was a weakness. So they killed them before the bond could take hold.

I'd felt the mate bond and I'd melted into it. I'd bared my throat to a stranger and begged him to mark me, and the whole time he'd been planning to—

Tears blurred the streetlights into smears of yellow. I swiped at my face and kept running.

My neck throbbed where his teeth had broken skin. The mark. The half-finished mark that tied me to a man who wanted me dead.

I ran until my lungs gave out.

The house was dark when I reached it. I climbed the back steps and slipped through the service entrance, praying the hallway would be empty.

My reflection caught in the hall mirror. The blue dress was torn at the shoulder where the rogues had grabbed me. My hair was matted with dirt and bits of brick dust. My neck was flushed and swollen, a raw bite mark on the back that throbbed with every heartbeat.

And my mother's necklace was gone.

That was what made my throat close. She'd clasped it around my neck the year she died. Never take it off, Faela. Promise me.

I'd promised. And now it was in some rogue's pocket, and she was dead, and I couldn't even keep the one thing she'd left me.

"Faela?"

Vela stood at the top of the stairs in her silk nightgown, eyes wide and bright. Not concerned. Excited. The way she always looked when she smelled trouble that wasn't hers.

"Oh my Goddess, what happened to you?" She came down two steps. "Is that blood? Father! Father, come look at—"

"Vela, don't—"

But she was already shouting, her voice ringing through the house with the kind of volume that couldn't be accidental. By the time our father appeared in the hallway, Vela was beside me. Before I could pull away, her hand shot out and yanked the torn collar of my dress down my back.

The bite mark. Fresh. Red. Right there on the back of my neck.

My father stared at it.

Then he hit me.

Open palm, full force across my cheek. My head snapped sideways and I caught myself on the wall. The hallway rang.

"What have you done?" His voice was quiet. That was worse than shouting.

I pressed my hand to my face. My cheek burned. My eyes burned. But I would not cry in front of him.

"A marked she-wolf is worthless." He stepped closer. "I arranged a marriage for you. The Alpha King himself. And you let someone mark you the same night."

"Am I cargo to you?" My voice shook, but I held his eyes. "Is that all I've ever been? Something to package up and sell?"

"You stupid, naive child." He said it slowly, each word pressed flat. "You understand nothing about how this world works."

"You need money that badly? You'd sell your own daughter to a man who murdered ten wives, and when it falls through, I'm the one who gets hit?"

His face twisted. Not guilt. Rage.

"Your mother." He spat the word. "Your mother married into this family with a fortune and she wouldn't spend a single coin on this pack. Wouldn't invest, wouldn't build, wouldn't share. She hoarded every cent and let the rest of us rot. Selfish to the bone."

"That was her money!" The words tore out of me so loud they echoed off the walls. "It was hers!"

"Yes! Her money! Always her money! She never saw this pack as her home. Never saw me as her partner." He jabbed a finger at me. "And I raised you alone for thirteen years, and this is the thanks I get. Another ungrateful child who spits in my face."

Vela slid against his arm. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and looked up with those round, practiced eyes.

"Daddy, don't be upset." Her voice went sugary. "She's not worth it."

His hand found her hair. He stroked it, and the fury in his face softened. Just enough. Just for her.

"You're a good girl," he said. "Always been better than your sister."

He looked at me. The softness vanished.

"Take her to the dungeon," he said to the servants behind him. "Lock it."

Two pairs of hands grabbed my arms. I didn't fight. There was nothing left to fight with.

The dungeon was underground. Stone walls, dirt floor, no windows. The air was damp earth and rust. The iron door bolted from the outside with a sound that echoed off the rock and faded into nothing.

I sat against the wall with my knees pulled to my chest. Water dripped somewhere in the dark, slow and steady. The cold seeped through the stone and into my bones.

My dress was still torn. My cheek still stung where my father's hand had landed. And the bite on my neck pulsed. Faint. Distant. Like a heartbeat that wasn't mine, tapping at the edge of my awareness. The mark wasn't complete. He'd pulled away before it could finish, and whatever bond should have locked into place was barely there. Thin enough that I wasn't sure it could carry anything at all.

But it existed. I could feel it connecting me to a man I couldn't see, somewhere out in the night.

I could pull on it. Send a call through the dark and hope he felt it.

But the last words I'd heard him say were *I swear I'll kill her*.

I pressed my forehead against my knees and let the dark close in.

I didn't reach.