This Time, I Won’t Beg for His Mark의 모든 챕터: 챕터 1 - 챕터 10

Ivy’s sobbing pulled me back to the rooftop.Adrian had brought her safely over the railing.She clung to him with her entire body, her arms locked around his neck and her bare legs pressed against his. The sight made nausea rise in my throat.Adrian seemed genuinely shaken.His usually steady hands trembled as he held the back of her head. He kissed her hair again and again, all his Alpha composure shattered by fear.“Thank the Goddess you’re safe.”Ivy shook violently in his arms.“Are you going to mark Serena?” she cried. “Because if you are, you should have let me jump.”Adrian gently wiped the tears from her cheeks.Then he looked at me.The tenderness in his expression disappeared, replaced by the cold authority that made every wolf in Blackwood Pack instinctively lower their head.“It’s only a marking ceremony,” he told Ivy. “No matter what title Serena receives, you will always come first.”The wolves around us went silent.Adrian released a long breath, as if he were the one b

Adrian sat in his office reviewing pack reports.Beside the files lay a nursery catalog, several oak samples, and a new nameplate.[ROWAN BLACKWOOD]He ran his thumb over the letters.A Council representative noticed the catalog.“When are you holding the marking ceremony?”Another wolf frowned. “Didn’t Serena ask Alpha Adrian to release her?”“She was angry because he saved Ivy first,” someone replied. “Everyone knows she has wanted to become Luna for eight years.”Adrian leaned back, a faint smile on his lips.“She’ll calm down. The pack will be informed once I choose a date.”To him, the matter was settled.Serena would move into the pack house, accept his mark, and give birth to the Blackwood heir. Her request to leave was merely an attempt to make him chase her.The office door flew open.A healer rushed inside with an emergency authorization form.“Alpha, Serena was taken to the regional infirmary. She’s hemorrhaging, and the pup’s wolf pulse is failing. They need your permission

I woke again the following morning with Helena asleep in the chair beside me. My entire body ached. The healers had stitched my arm again where the wound had torn open. Thick bandages covered it from my wrist to my elbow.A dull cramp remained deep in my abdomen. I placed my left hand over the place where Rowan's wolf pulse used to beat. Nothing answered. The grief was not sharp at first. It was too large to feel like pain. It was an emptiness that seemed to fill the entire room.Helena woke when I moved. "Serena?" She stood quickly and reached for the cup beside my bed. "Do you need water? Should I call the healer?""Rowan," I whispered. Her hand stopped. Her face crumpled. "I'm sorry."I closed my eyes. Adrian had chosen the name without asking me. At first, I had resented hearing him use it. It was one more part of my future that he had decided without believing I deserved a choice. Yet at some point, the pup inside me had become Rowan. When I felt his faint wolf pulse beneath my ha

I did not return to Blackwood Pack. After leaving the infirmary, I moved into a small house in neutral territory overlooking pine-covered hills. Nothing inside had been selected by Adrian. I chose yellow dishes and arranged the furniture for myself.The formal release of his claim remained locked in the bottom drawer of my desk. The bond ring was gone. I had thrown it from the rooftop, and I never asked anyone to search for it.My body healed slowly. My arm closed after its second stitching, and the bruises faded. Some mornings I woke with my hand over my stomach and remembered only when Rowan’s pulse did not answer.Three days after I left the infirmary, Helena brought a dark wooden box containing Rowan’s nameplate. A faint stain remained where Adrian’s blood had touched it."Adrian said you should decide what happens to it," Helena said.Rowan had never seen the nursery or the full moon, but he had existed. For months, his pulse had beaten beneath my heart."I want it buried with him

One year after Rowan's death, my life had become ordinary. At the archive, I organized records of wolves who had left old packs to begin again. I understood them better than they knew.Helena came for dinner twice a month. My yellow dishes stayed in the cabinet, and I killed three balcony plants before learning what survived winter.Some nights I still dreamed of Rowan’s pulse and woke with my hand over my stomach. Grief remained, but it no longer made every decision for me.Blackwood Pack changed too. After Adrian surrendered control of the emergency blood reserve, the elders made the change permanent.Healers no longer needed the Alpha’s permission to release compatible blood in an emergency. The rule was not named after Rowan. He was my child, not a warning the pack could display after learning too late.Adrian remained a capable Alpha. Blackwood prospered under his command, but he had learned that being a good Alpha did not make him a good mate.He left the suite beside the empty