This Time, I Won’t Beg for His Mark

Blackwood Pack Infirmary.

The sharp pain in my arm pulled me back from the memory of my death.

The healer wrapped the final layer of bandage around my wound and gently reminded me, “Keep it dry for the next few days. The blade was coated with silver, so your wolf will heal more slowly than usual.”

Adrian Blackwood sat in the chair beside the healer’s desk and gave a contemptuous laugh.

“It’s barely a cut, Serena. Since when did you become so delicate?”

I said nothing.

The other healers exchanged uneasy glances.

They had all witnessed the attack.

The rogue had been released from Council confinement two years earlier. He was enormous, with a scarred face and the heavy build of a wolf accustomed to violence.

The blade he swung at me was nearly a foot long. It tore through the flesh of my arm, leaving a wound that required more than twenty stitches.

And its original target had been Adrian’s heart.

My silence angered him.

His dark eyes turned cold, and the pressure of his Alpha blood settled over the room.

“Don’t be dramatic, Serena. I already said that because you saved my life, you can ask for anything you want. What more do you expect? Why are you sitting there looking at me as if I’ve wronged you?”

I looked at the man who had grown up beside me.

I did not know when Adrian had stopped speaking to me as the woman he loved and begun treating me with the arrogance an Alpha reserved for a disobedient subordinate.

All his tenderness now belonged to Ivy Bell.

The orphan he had rescued during the great flood eight years ago.

My gaze fell on the pink rabbit hair tie around Adrian’s wrist.

It belonged to her.

He glanced at the hair tie, and panic flickered briefly through his eyes before he forced it away.

I suppressed the familiar ache in my chest and looked up at him with a faint smile.

“Anything?”

Adrian froze.

His jaw tightened, but he still nodded with the resignation of a man preparing to make a sacrifice.

“Yes.”

One of the healers had attended the Alpha Academy with him. He immediately laughed.

“Then you’d better surrender, Alpha. Serena is finally going to make you complete the marking ceremony.”

The others joined in.

“Eight years together is long enough. It’s time you officially made her your Luna.”

“I already have my formal robes ready. Which full moon are we celebrating?”

Their laughter filled the infirmary.

Every one of them was certain I would ask Adrian to mark me.

After all, the entire Blackwood Pack knew how much I loved him.

Eight years ago, Adrian had privately chosen me as his mate. He promised that once he inherited the Alpha title, he would mark me before the pack and publicly name me his Luna.

But the ceremony had been postponed again and again because of Ivy.

Now I had taken a blade meant for his heart.

No one doubted that I would use the life debt he owed me to claim the ceremony I had wanted for so long.

Adrian believed it too.

He was already bracing himself to agree.

Listening to their teasing, I opened my mouth to ask Adrian to release me from his claim.

Before I could speak, a young guard burst into the infirmary.

“Alpha, something’s wrong. Ivy is threatening to kill herself!”

Again.

If I remembered correctly, this was Ivy’s one hundred and eighth suicide threat.

Exactly as it had happened in my previous life.

The guard had barely finished speaking before Adrian rushed out.

By the time we reached the roof of the pack house, Ivy was standing beyond the railing.

Her eyes were swollen and red, and her delicate face had turned deathly pale.

She wore one of Adrian’s white shirts. The hem barely covered her thighs, leaving her slender legs exposed to the cold wind.

Then I remembered that Ivy had been there during the attack.

While I threw myself in front of the blade, Adrian had pulled her tightly into his arms and shielded her with his body.

She had emerged from Adrian’s private suite afterward wearing this same white shirt—the one I had given him for his birthday.

“Don’t come any closer!” Ivy cried.

Adrian stopped immediately.

The coldness he had shown me in the infirmary vanished. His voice became low and gentle, filled with concern.

“Ivy, come back over the railing. Then I’ll explain everything.”

“Serena took that blade for you, and you promised her anything she wanted.” Ivy’s tears spilled down her cheeks. “She loves you so much. She’s going to ask for the marking ceremony, and you’re going to agree, aren’t you?”

No one answered her.

No one needed to.

Every wolf on that roof believed the same thing.

“I’m sorry, Adrian.” Ivy’s shoulders trembled. “But if you mark her, I’ll lose you for the rest of my life. I would rather die.”

She moved one foot closer to the edge.

“Stop!”

The force of Adrian’s Alpha command rolled across the rooftop, but his deep voice was filled with fear for her.

“Come down first. Whatever you’re afraid of, I’ll explain.”

Ivy stared at him through her tears.

“You won’t abandon me?”

“I won’t.”

His answer came without hesitation.

Adrian cared about everything that concerned Ivy.

She liked pink, so the rose-quartz bracelet he had originally commissioned for my birthday became her reward for passing her final Academy examinations.

She was afraid of thunder, so no matter how late it was, one frightened message from her would make Adrian leave my side and rush to her room.

Once, he accompanied me to my grandfather’s funeral in another territory.

That night, a violent storm closed the mountain pass. When Ivy called him crying and he realized he could not return to her, Adrian turned on me in fury.

“Did he have to die today of all days?”

I had stared at him, unable to believe the man I loved could say something so cruel.

When Adrian first confessed his feelings to me, he promised that I would always be the one person he chose above everyone else.

But when twenty-six-year-old Adrian met eighteen-year-old Ivy, all that unconditional devotion became hers.

He remembered every tear she shed.

He answered every frightened call.

He treated her smallest pain as an emergency while my deepest wounds became proof that I was being dramatic.

In my previous life, jealousy had blinded me.

I had used the life debt he owed me to force him into the marking ceremony, believing that once I became his Luna, I could finally win him back.

Instead, that choice destroyed me.

This time, I was no longer jealous.

I was no longer waiting for Adrian to remember that he had once loved me.

As I watched him comfort Ivy while the wound I had taken for him bled through its bandages, only one thought remained.

I did not want him anymore.