Page 56 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

Elias catchesup to me near the hall outside the council wing.

“You’re gonna get yourself benched,” he says.

“Already am.”

He falls into step beside me, quiet for a few strides. “What aren’t you saying?”

I wait until we’re deeper in, away from ears.

“When I found Edmund,” I start, “he told me something.”

Elias stiffens. “What kind of something?”

“The Bolvi line isn’t just rogue werewolves. It’s older.Wilder. They don’t bend to pack law. They don’t need an alpha. They run on instinct and blood memory. That’s why shifters hate them—because they can’t be controlled.”

“And Kendall?”

“She’s more than just Bolvi. She’s part of something that’s waking up. Something tied to the old wars. And if she shifts again in the open, they’re going to come for her. Not just PEACE. Not just Typhon’s Brood.Everyone.Lots of species and humans have their own prophecies about her specifically. Good, but mostly bad. War. All-ruling.”

Elias curses low.

“She knows some of it now,” I say. “I told her some at the safehouse. She deserved that much.”

“And what if she doesn’t want this?”

“She doesn’t,” I say. “But it’s not about want anymore.”

“Then what the hellisit about?”

I meet his eyes.

“Survival.”

23

KENDALL

Being back in the city feels like walking through someone else’s memories.

It’s all here—the cracked sidewalks, the smell of exhaust and street food, the blend of noise that used to feel like white noise and now feelstoo muchall at once.

But I’m not the same girl who left it.

And I know it.

The pulse of the place hits me different now. My ears catch snippets of heartbeats under jackets. I can smell someone’s fear from twenty feet away. There’s magic in the air—old and quiet—and for the first time, I feel like I might be able toreadit.

The second change didn’t just trigger the outside world, it activated even more keen senses inside me. Awareness. Instincts.

Dad said it was okay to come back though. Just for a while.

“They’re distracted,” he told me over a burner phone that smells like herbs and ash. “Typhon’s Brood has them stirred up. You’re safer in plain sight—for now.”

It’s funny how safety’s a fucking coin toss these days.

Still, I’m here. Back in the world I used to think was mine.

And I have two stops.

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