Marked By My Novels & Stories

He stopped. "Didn't realize what?" His eyes met mine. Dark. Haunted. "That once you're marked, leaving isn't simple anymore." The words hung in the air. Heavy with implication. "What does that mean?" "It means the bond changes you." His voice dropped. "Makes separation painful. Difficult. The mark isn't just a symbol, Della. It's a connection. And breaking it—" He looked away. "It has consequences." "What kind of consequences?" "The kind that make leaving almost impossible." His jaw was so tight I thought it might break. "The kind Victoria didn't understand until it was too late."

I have to know if she's starting to remember. Then I see her reach for her shoulder, and I know. The mark. The one from her dream. It's real, and it's hurting her. My fault. Everything is my fault. "Does it hurt?" I ask before I can stop myself. The fear in her eyes when she realizes I know about it nearly breaks me. I've scared her. The last thing I ever wanted to do was scare her. I leave before I can make it worse, but not before telling her I'll see her tonight. At the party. Because Marcus is right—contact means consequences. But I've already made contact. The damage is done.

The mark. The Alpha had marked me. And I knew exactly what that meant. My heat. My heat is going to come. “Oh no…”

Then Malcolm disarmed me with a clever turn of his wrist, sending my blade into the grass. I bent over, hands on my knees, laughing softly between breaths. Malcolm shook his head in amazement. “You are strong for someone who just came back from what you went through.” My smile widened. Then his expression changed. He gave me a curious look, one that made me straighten. “Check your arm.” My heart skipped. Quickly, I pulled back my sleeve. There, faint but unmistakable, was the beginning of a mark forming beneath my skin. The letter B.

The mark glowed faintly, pulsing to the rhythm of my heartbeat. “I think…” My voice shook. “She didn’t just mark me. She claimed me.”

As the alpha turned to her with cold eyes, she muttered. “Not anymore, Myra. I reject you, and you don’t have my mark anymore,” he snarled as Myra felt that wicked pain on her wrist as she shot up from the bed. “No!” She screams out, her body trembling in shock as she stares at her arm, the mark still there, the room feels drowsy; meanwhile, Myra rushes to the toilet and turns on the shower, letting the cool water soothe her body. Myra rocks back and forth, feeling suffocated, until she touches her hands to confirm his mark is still there, a mark she had scratched until it became red.

I look down at myself because sometimes naming things gives you power over them: bite at the shoulder, bright and ugly; bite lower, collarbone, a red mouth; four long claw-welts bleeding down my bicep, four more across my thigh; ankle tape soaked where one line of blood runs into my boot; fingerprints in blood on the linoleum where he touched the floor and signed his presence. Am I marked? It sits like a stone under my tongue. Remy’s river-voice answers from memory: A mark is a yes we say out loud and wear with teeth. A mark is a vow we make facing each other. This is not that. Still, the stone stays. If he sees me like this, will he flinch? Will he quietly file this under “reasons to make A

His mark. "This is Emeric's," she said. "What?" "This fur." Her voice sounded strange to her. "It's his. It's from his left flank. He broke himself falling off the watchtower when I was seven. The scar came in white. It never changed back." She lifted her eyes. "Nobody else has this mark. Nobody." Varek didn't move. "Your brother has been dead five years." "I know how long." "Then how—"

she wiggled her brows suggestively. “Shit, we are late.” I stepped out of the car just as she did the same. We both held hands as we hurried to class together after realising we spent a long time chattering away. Macy pulled the door open and we both stepped in. My world tilted the moment I walked in. The chatters of the students faded into a dull hum as the recognition hit me like a physical blow.

*Mark. The word landed differently than it should have. Not bureaucratic. Not procedural. Something older. Something that made my skin heat and my spine pull in two directions at once. "What does it mean," I said. "To be marked." His eyes found mine. The gold didn't flash this time. It stayed. --- "You found it," he said finally. His voice was careful in the way voices are careful when the speaker is managing something large. "You knew it was here." "My patrol found the blood this morning."