All Chapters of The Alpha's Mark Came Too Late: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

It was the thousand and seventh night. When he rolled off me, dawn had not yet broken.I reached for the back of my neck. Bare. Nothing there.He had bitten my shoulder, my collarbone, my wrist.For a thousand and seven nights, he had avoided the one spot at the back of my neck reserved for a Luna's mark.It was a constant reminder that he wanted only the face that bore a faint resemblance to Celine, not me."Go to the east court after dawn," he said, buckling his belt.My hand stilled. Only then did I nod. "Okay."A room in the east court had been locked for three years. On the fifteenth of every month, I had to go inside.I carried the clothes into the courtyard one piece at a time, aired them in the sun all day, then hung them back up before dark.They were Celine's clothes. I had counted them: 47 pieces in total.I had spent three years here, taking care of a dead woman's clothes.He came to the east court that afternoon while I was putting the last piece away.It was white, with a

"When?""The next eclipse," I said. "Scents are hardest to distinguish that night. No one will be able to pick out mine."I've checked the cliff. Twenty paces down, there's a stone ledge hidden from anyone standing above. Rig a net there. Beneath the net is an underground river that never freezes in winter. It will carry me downstream.""But you'll still be alive." He stared at me. "If you go over that cliff alive, all he has to do is follow your scent downstream. He'll know you survived."I pulled a crystal vial from the lowest shelf of the medicine rack and set it on the table. "I've prepared deathgrass potion. It will stop my heart for six hours."I looked out the window. There were three days left until the next eclipse.Around midnight, an uproar erupted outside the medicine hut.I pushed the door open and found a crowd gathered outside.At the front, a mother knelt in the snow, cradling a pup whose body had already gone stiff.I knew that pup.Two nights earlier, his fever wouldn

I landed in the net.No one on the cliff could see me, including Theron.Celine's blade had pierced my shoulder, its edge coated in wolfsbane. As soon as the deathgrass wore off, the poison surged through me.Raynor tried to suppress the poison, but as a rogue, he did not have the power to do it.I lay in a cave downstream for seven days, delirious with fever and biting down on a piece of wood to endure the pain.On the seventh night, Raynor returned late, snow clinging to his clothes."How is it out there?"He was silent for a long time before answering. "He's searched the entire stretch of river, from the foot of the cliff to two miles downstream. Seven days without stopping.""And what did he find?""Your cloak," he said. "And Celine's knife."He paused and turned to me. "Only you were missing."Raynor watched me. "Last night, the Elder urged him to call off the search. Anyone swept into an underground river in winter would be long gone after seven days. He told Theron to hold a mem

The second piece of news took 20 days to reach the north.The whole town was saying that the Alpha of Shadowridge had led the forces of nine packs into Silvermoon territory.The first thing Silvermoon did after my death was remove my name from the bloodline register, and that didn't sit well with Theron.The register was carved into a wooden board. Removing a name meant carving it out with a knife, cut after cut, until only a raw white scar remained.The Silvermoon Alpha stood in front of the pack house and made a speech to the pack.He called me a disgrace and offered to send another she-wolf to renew the treaty.He also sent a messenger. These were his exact words."That trash hadn't been marked after three years by your side. She was never your Luna. You need not grieve for her."To please Theron, they had even dug up my mother's coffin and dumped it in the wasteland along the border.Their reason was that any bloodline that produced such a disgrace no longer deserved a place in the

By the next morning, the snow at Moonwatch Ridge was knee-deep.When I opened the door, he was already standing there.After three years apart, he was so gaunt I almost did not recognize him. His luxurious robes could not hide how exhausted he looked.His right hand hung at his side. Old scars lay beneath fresh cuts until the skin on the back of his hand was nearly ruined.He saw me first, then the child peeking out from behind me.His breath caught. "This...""My son with Raynor." I put Owen behind me.I watched him stand in the snow, not daring to take a single step forward.The most powerful Alpha alive stood at the door of a stone hut, as helpless as a man who had wandered into the wrong place."Ella." He swallowed hard. Then, in front of everyone, he dropped to one knee in the snow."I was wrong. I cast Celine out. No pack dares take her in. I burned the treaty. I sent your mother's coffin back to the ancestral grounds. I made them carve your name back in."I kept the Luna's posit