Page 94 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

“He was here,” I mutter, crouching beside a broken fencepost.

She stops. “How long ago?”

I sniff, frown. “A few hours. Maybe less. There’s blood.”

Her breath catches. “Is it his?”

I shake my head. “Don’t know. Could be.”

I brush leaves aside and find the trail—barely visible, smears of rust-colored red on a flattened patch of dirt. Something was dragged. Not far. But far enough.

Kendall crouches beside me. “Is it fresh?”

“Not warm. But not old either.”

She looks up at the trees, eyes scanning the bark. And that’s when she sees it.

“Callum,” she says, voice suddenly tight. “Look.”

My gaze follows hers.

There, carved into the trunk of a black pine—deep and precise—is a sigil.

A jagged spiral intersected by claw marks and circles, etched in a language older than most modern tongues. And it makes my stomach drop.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

Kendall kneels closer. “What is it?”

I touch the edge of the carving. My fingers come back sticky with something black.

“Blood,” I say. “Mixed with iron dust.”

“That’s… not normal.”

“No,” I say. “It’sBrood.”

Her eyes widen. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve seen this mark once before. Ten years ago. At a camp where they kept our kind locked up during the Reaping.”

I can barely say the word without spitting.

Kendall rises slowly, eyes narrowing. “What does it mean?”

“It’s a claim,” I say. “Not a warning. Not a threat. It means ‘this one belongs to us.’”

She goes pale.

I step back, letting the scent of blood and earth wash over me. I try to listen past the wind and trees—past the tremble in Kendall’s breath.

But the forest has nothing to say. Not yet.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. Elias.

I yank it out and answer without thinking, my voice clipped. “Talk.”

“You’re not gonna like it,” he says, already tense.

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