Semua Bab Marked by the Alpha: Blood Oath: Bab 31 - Bab 40

EliEverything hurts.My ribs scream the second I draw breath, and the snow burns against my skin, wet through my shirt and crusted with my own dried blood. I’m not sure how long I’ve been out. An hour? A day? The light filtering through the trees is gray and wan, bleeding into dusk. At least the bond is mercifully quiet.I’m cold. So cold. And yet sweat clings to my skin like oil.I try to sit up and my muscles seize. A strangled noise escapes me before I bite it back and blink through the blur. The forest surrounding me is too quiet. Like something large and threatening is hanging around, disturbing the normal order of things. No. I have to stop summoning bad omens. He’s not here. If he was, I’d be halfway back to camp by now. Or dead.I dig my hands into the frozen earth and force myself upright, every movement a fresh agony. My side is soaked in blood, sticky and half-frozen. The wound will heal if I can get somewhere safe. If I don’t get out of this clearing, I’ll be carrion

RonanI stayed away. Waiting at the forest’s edge for him to come back. Tail tucked between his legs, ready to beg me to give him another chance.Nothing. No sign of him. So I’m going back to find the little shit. The forest is silver with moonlight and laced with Eli’s scent.I follow it like a bloodhound, head down, eyes narrowed. Every step, the bond yanks tighter. Like it’s dragging a hook through my chest. Raw and sharp and maddening.He’s close. I can taste him on the air. Salt-slick fear, fever, blood and sweat. His scent isn’t clean anymore. It’s frayed at the edges. Strained. It makes something ancient inside me rise, stretch and salivate.My wolf stirs, restless. Pacing behind my ribs like a thing in a cage.Take.Mark.Breed.I bare my teeth and push it down.The trail weaves through ice-crusted brush, across half-frozen mud, into a pocket of rock and moss so cloaked in magic even my senses hesitate. Old wards. Weak now, but lingering, like dried blood under fingernails.

RonanThe council chamber reeks of sweat and tension.I sit at the head of the long stone table, fingers drumming a rhythm of barely restrained violence against the carved wolf emblem. Enforcers flank the room, some standing with arms crossed, others sitting uneasily like the stone beneath them might crack.They’ve stopped looking me in the eye.Good. I feel like killing something and I don’t need any encouragement to choose violence.I let the silence stretch.Jace speaks first, low and even. “Redmaw’s getting bolder. They’ve crossed the southern boundary four times this week.”“They’re watching,” someone mutters. “Waiting to see if we fall apart.”“They won’t have to wait long,” Mara snaps.The room freezes.She leans forward, dark eyes burning into mine. “They smell weakness, Ronan. And you’re bleeding it.”The growl slips out before I can stop it. Meeting adjourned.She corners me outside the lodge, boots crunching over frostbitten pine needles. The wind bites down from the ridg

RonanEli is half-sprawled in the snow, panting, flushed with pain and heat. The bond pulses between us like a living brand, screaming for what it wants. For what it needs. And still, still, this little fucker has the audacity to look me in the eye and say,“Fine. I’ll come back, but I have some conditions.”My brows lift slowly. “Conditions.”I swear to the gods I’m going to kill him. He nods, wobbling where he crouches. Even in the state he’s in, blood drying in his hair, the reek of Redmaw still clinging to his skin, he lifts his chin like he’s got teeth worth baring.“You think you’re in a position to negotiate?” I step closer, and he sways like he might collapse.“You’re one more breath from being spread out and filled so deep you forget your own name, and you want to have a little chat?”He glowers, but his whole body betrays him. Steam curls off his skin in slow spirals. His scent thickens, sweet and maddening. The heat has returned in full, boiling inside him. I can feel it c

EliI don’t know where I end and he begins.I’m all sweat and slick skin and the rough drag of wool against my back. My breath punches out of me in shaky little bursts, and my body won’t stop arching toward him, like gravity isn’t working right anymore.He’s still wearing pants.That’s the worst part.I’m naked, raw, trembling, and he’s still dressed in trousers straining over thighs that keep shifting between man and beast. His fingers never stop moving over me. Mapping. Testing. Claiming.I’m sprawled across the bed, knees parted, chest flushed red, nipples so tight and hard they ache.And all he’s done so far is kiss me.I mean really kiss me.Like he wants to crawl down my throat and live inside me.Like I’m a thing he’s earned.A thing he owns.“Open your eyes,” he growls, fingers sliding up the inside of my thigh, not touching there, not yet. “I want to see you.”I try. I really do.But my head lolls back against the pillows, every muscle too loose, too hot, too gone.He slaps t