All Chapters of Marked in the Middle: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

The night air was thick with the scent of iron and rain. It clung to the edges of the war-torn valley like a lingering memory, one that refused to fade, even as the smoke began to drift away.Lena stood at the ridge overlooking the battlefield, her mark pulsing faintly beneath her collarbone. The storm that had raged for hours had quieted into a low, haunting drizzle, and in the silence, she could almost hear the ghosts of those who had fallen.Behind her, the surviving warriors of both packs, Silverclaw and Bloodmoon, moved in weary silence, tending to the wounded and gathering the dead. There were no longer sides here, no longer enemies. Only those who had lived long enough to understand what their war had cost.Roman approached her slowly. His boots sank into the mud, his dark coat soaked through with blood and rain. “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said softly.Lena didn’t turn to look at him. “I’m not alone,” she whispered. Her eyes were fixed on the valley below, where the

The night after the light died, the mountains were silent.No wind, no sound of wings or wolves, just an emptiness that pressed against the heart like a held breath. The Lunar Fortress, once alive with shifting runes and ghostly glow, was now nothing but a ruin. Cold stone. Fallen moonlight. Stillness.Then a sound broke the silence. A heartbeat.Slow at first then faster, steadier.From the cracked center of the floor where the sigil once blazed, mist began to rise, curling into pale shapes that shimmered like smoke under starlight. The mist twisted, condensed and took form.Roman gasped awake.He lay sprawled on cold stone, his chest heaving, his skin slick with sweat and blood. His hands trembled as he pushed himself upright, blinking through the haze. “Lena…” he rasped.The name tore from him like a prayer.He looked around, panic clawing through his chest. The fortress was shattered, half the ceiling had collapsed, and moonlight poured in through the cracks. The others were gone.

Kael had faced a thousand kinds of silence before, the quiet before a battle, the hush of blood cooling on steel, the heavy stillness that came after victory.But this silence, now, was different.It was wrong.Lyra hadn’t moved since the crystal flared.She sat rigid at the war table, the shard glowing bright enough to cast shadows that flickered like living things across the stone walls. Her eyes were unfocused, gray irises clouded by a light that wasn’t their own.“Lyra,” Kael said carefully.No response.He reached for her hand. Her skin was ice.Then, all at once, her head snapped toward him.But it wasn’t her looking back.A voice, familiar and impossible, rolled through the air, echoing in a timbre not human, not alive.“Commander of the Ashenfall. Still standing. How tedious.”Kael drew his sword in one breath, the tip hovering just beneath her chin. “Get out of her.”The voice chuckled, deep, amused, ancient. “You forget yourself, soldier. She opened the door. I merely walked

The sky over Eldervale burned with twilight, a bruised shade of purple and dying gold that seemed to mirror the heaviness in the air. The castle’s towers stood like broken teeth against the fading sun, and from the balcony of the high hall, Alaric watched the horizon in silence.It had been three days since the fall of the Shadow Court. Three days since the last of the smoke had cleared from the battlefield, and three days since the name Crownless Queen had stopped being a curse and became a burden.The halls of the citadel buzzed with rebuilding. Blacksmiths rang their hammers in the courtyards, healers moved like ghosts through the wounded, and the banners, once tattered and ash-stained, now hung again in cautious defiance. Yet beneath it all, silence haunted the throne room like a living thing.Liora stood in the center of that silence.The throne, once belonging to her mother, loomed behind her, high-backed, forged from obsidian and moonsteel.

The storm had broken over Durnfell Pass.By the time Liora’s army dragged the wounded back to Eldervale, the sky itself seemed to bleed, crimson light spilling over a horizon choked with smoke and ruin. The once-golden fields were nothing but ash and trampled bodies. The Varyn were halted, but only for a breath. Behind them, the Ashborne banners kept advancing, black wolves on red silk, a nightmare she thought buried with her father’s crown.Now, the war has come home.The great gates of Eldervale groaned shut as the last survivors stumbled inside. The air stank of sweat and iron. Soldiers dragged barricades into place, smiths hammered spikes into the cobblestones, and priests muttered prayers that vanished into the roar of the storm.Liora stood in the courtyard, armor still streaked with soot and blood, her cloak torn and soaked. Every heartbeat echoed with the memory of screams, of Alaric’s limp form being carried off the field.Kael approa