All Chapters of The Red Mark: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

CONTENT WARNINGThis story contains dark themes, violence, trauma, religious cult elements, captivity, and morally grey characters. Reader discretion is advised.I was born inside a cult that taught me fear was holy and obedience was salvation.I believed them until the night the Blood King destroyed everything I knew and claimed me as his own.They called him a monster.They were wrong.Monsters kill you.He keeps you. Chapter I Liana Pov The first time I saw him, he walked through holy blood like it was rain. We were still chanting when the shooting started. Low voices. Bare feet. Cold stone. My world had always been small—four walls of carved rock, a courtyard with a cracked fountain, and the mountains pressing in from every side like the ribs of some ancient beast holding us inside its chest. Tonight, those ribs felt too tight. “Liana.” Mother Elara’s fingers pressed into my shoulder, guiding me toward the center of the hall. “Stan

Chapter IIILiana PovI woke to quiet.Not the fragile quiet of prayer halls or the forced stillness before punishment—but something colder. Controlled. The kind of silence that existed because nothing was allowed to disrupt it.For a moment, I didn’t move.I lay there, staring at a ceiling that wasn’t carved stone, waiting for the familiar weight of eyes on my skin. Waiting for a voice to tell me what to do next.Nothing came.The bed beneath me was soft. Too soft. Clean sheets brushed my legs when I shifted, and the unfamiliar sensation made my stomach tighten. I sat up abruptly, breath catching as I scanned the room.White walls. Dark wood. A single window set too high to reach.Not a cell.Not freedom either.My hand flew to my left shoulder.The bandage was gone.Bare skin greeted my fingers—and beneath it, the Mark.I didn’t need a mirror to know it was there. My body remembered. The symbol lived under my skin like a second pulse, faint but undeniable.A slow throb answered my t

Liana POVThe Mark burned faintly as the night swallowed us.The SUV moved downhill, away from the compound, away from everything that had ever defined my world. The road twisted like a living thing beneath the tires, each turn dragging me further from the only life I had known.I didn’t cry.Not because I wasn’t breaking—but because something inside me had gone very, very quiet.The man beside me didn’t speak.Cassian.The name settled into my bones like a second pulse.The car smelled of leather and gun oil and something sharp beneath it all—control. Not fear. Not panic. Control was heavier. Colder.My wrists still burned where the ropes had been cut. My shoulder throbbed, the Mark restless now, like it was awake in a way it hadn’t been before. Not screaming. Not flaring.Listening.I stared at my hands in my lap, memorizing them. The dirt under my nails. The faint tremor I refused to let grow.“You’re going to look at me eventually,” Cassian said.His voice was low, even. Not crue