Page 125 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

“And yet… it’s just beginning, isn’t it?”

49

KENDALL

Mathis stands like a statue in the blood-soaked dirt, the battlefield still steaming around us. His gaze cuts through the haze, not at Callum or even me—but at Adora, slumped unconscious beside us like a broken crown no one wants to touch.

“She’s stable,” I say, voice tighter than I mean it to be. “The Hollowed is gone.”

“No,” he replies. “It’s simply… moved.”

My stomach flips. “What the hell does that mean?”

He steps forward slowly, his right hand gnarled with scars at his side like a loyal shadow, arms crossed and expression smug. Mathis doesn’t look at me when he speaks—he watches the skies, like he’s reading runes in the ash.

“You pulled it out of her. Burned it free with blood and will. But that kind of power doesn’t vanish. It hungers. It remembers.”

My breath catches in my throat.

“You’re saying it’sstill here?”

“I’m saying it’s looking for somewhere else to go.”

I glance at Adora, then Callum, then back to Mathis. “And you just show up now, like you weren’t watching the entire time?”

“I was watching,” he says, voice like cold water. “From a distance. Sometimes that’s where strategy lives.”

“And what aboutfamily?”

His jaw tics. For a split second, there’s emotion behind the sharp edge of his eyes.

“I didn’t know I had one,” he murmurs. “Not really. Not until it was almost too late.”

The burly man suddenly steps forward, crouching beside Adora without asking, sliding his arms beneath her and lifting her like she weighs nothing.

“She’ll be safe with us,” he says. “We have containment. And a claim.”

Callum bristles beside me, stepping forward, voice low. “What claim?”

Mathis turns to him. “She’smy daughter, Callum. Just as you were oncemy son.”

Callum flinches.

Not physically. Emotionally. Deeply.

I feel it like a second heartbeat inside my ribs.

“I’m not part of your pack anymore,” he says. “You lost that right.”

Mathis nods once. Not in agreement—acknowledgement.

“And yet… you still lead like one of mine. Maybe better than I ever did.”

He turns his back then, just like that. No fanfare. No goodbye. His man carries Adora down the ridge, disappearing into the trees without looking back.

Just like that—she’s gone.

Again. But I feel like this is the right thing for her, and Callum didn’t push. We both feel it. It’s time to let her really figure out who she is and find her place.

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