All Chapters of The Mark You Hide: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

GageThe elders don’t meet in the packhouse. Not officially. They meet in the den—an old room tucked behind the library, lined with dark wood and older rules. No windows. No phones. A ward stone in the lintel turns every signal into static.I stand at the center of their circle because that’s what an Alpha does when his authority is being weighed like meat.Voss sits in the high chair, silver hair braided tight, eyes pale as winter. To his left, Maren and Holt—both sharp enough to smell a lie through brick. The rest of them form a half ring of bodies. No one offers me a seat. In this room, a chair is permission. If you sit without it, you submit. If you demand it, you admit you need it. So, I stand and let them read my spine.“You brought a human into our home,” Voss says, like he’s reading a report.“I brought a witness into a secured room,” I answer. My voice is even. My wolf is not. It prowls behind my ribs, keyed to the pull I can still feel through the bond. She’s awake. She’s ang

GageMara’s fingers were still on the folder when I reached the table.“Close it,” I said.She didn’t flinch. She looked up like she was daring me to make this worse. “So, it’s real. A ledger. Names. Payments. Whatever you people don’t want to say out loud.”Mason shifted at the bunker door, shoulders squared, scent spiking sharp and pissed. He wanted me to let him handle the problem the old way.I set my palm on the folder and pushed it shut myself. “You’ve seen enough.”“Convenient,” Mara snapped.“Mara.” The bond tugged when I said her name—my body wired to respond to her. I forced my voice flat. “Back away from the table.”Mason angled between her and the exit. “Alpha, she’s touching sealed records.”His eyes flicked to her mouth, then her throat. Too focused. Not attraction—assessment. He was deciding where to grab.“Don’t,” I said, without looking at him.He froze. Alpha voice didn’t need volume. It needed certainty.Mara’s gaze cut to Mason. “Tell your guard dog to stand down. I

MaraGage snatched the photo out of my hand and shoved it in his pocket. I started to question him but he stormed away in perfect Gage fashion. I decided not to push the subject.. yet.The cabin was too clean and too quiet, built for people who needed to disappear. Gage called it a safe room. I called it a box with better lighting. And it hated me right back, too.He let me shower, which sounded generous until I realized he’d posted himself somewhere in the hall. I couldn’t hear him, but I could feel him—an annoying pull in my chest that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with that stupid blood “tether” he’d forced on me.I turned the water hot and tried to wash off the bunker dust and the sick twist of that photo I’d found in the dresser. A woman who looked like my grandmother, standing beside wolves like it was a family picnic.Then I reached for the towel on the hool and realized I’d forgotten to grab one.Of course I did.I stared at the empty hook, dripping, and aim

Mara By morning, my body felt like it had been rewired overnight.I wasn’t sick. I was turned up—sounds too crisp, skin too sensitive, my pulse too quick. The bond tugged whenever I thought about Gage, like my ribs had grown a compass and it only pointed at him.I hated that.I tried to tell myself it was just stress. I drank water; it tasted like pennies. The fridge air carried too many smells at once: plastic, onions, detergent, stale bread. My stomach rolled. When I rubbed my palms together, my own scent hit me, sharper than usual, almost spicy. Even sound felt close: the wall clock, the heater tick, my socks scraping the floor. Every creak made my muscles coil, ready to bolt. My body wasn't resting; it was listening. Breathing through it didn't help. The cabin had a faint animal note under the cleaner, and it made my teeth ache. That wasn't normal. None of this was.I paced the cabin, staring at the ward stone like it would grow legs and start running at me. “Safe room,” my ass.W

MaraThe packhouse looked normal from the outside in the way a trap can look like a home if you don’t know what you’re seeing. Wide porch. Warm lights. Trucks. Woods pressed in on every side like the whole place had been built to vanish.Gage had agreed to a “brief return” for one reason: I wouldn’t stop asking what the crescent-and-slash meant, and I’d started asking loud. Fifteen minutes, he’d said. Escort. No wandering. “Eyes forward,” Mason told me, and I almost laughed at the irony of being told not to look while every living thing here was looking at me.Two wolves flanked me as we crossed the gravel. Not guards, they’d insist. “Escort.” Like changing the word made it less obvious I could be grabbed at any second. Mason stayed half a step ahead, scanning the yard like he expected trouble.The moment I stepped inside, the air hit different—warmer, thicker, saturated with scent. Coffee. Laundry detergent. Sweat. A metallic bite like weapons cleaned too often. Under it, wolf. Pack.