Page 43 of Blood Marked

Hewelcomed it.

Because pain meant movement. Pain meant distraction. Pain was better than the suffocating pressure he’d been carrying for days—weeks.

With every broken rib, every splatter of blood against bark, he let the rage roll out of him.

The pressure.

The fucking helplessness.

The weight of being someone’s heir. Someone’s mate. Someone’s last hope in a court full of ghosts with knives.

The rogue snarled again, claws raised.

Kael met the strike, twisted inside it, and drove his blade into the man’s gut with a roar that shook the trees. The rogue sputtered blood, staggered back, and fell.

Kael turned.

The third rogue, a smaller one with a hunter’s gait—had already broken into a sprint toward the treeline.

Coward.

Kael ran after him, legs burning, boots tearing through brush and frozen loam.

And then his vision split.

The bond pulsed hot behind his eyes. The world blurred at the edges.

He shifted.

Mid-step. Mid-swing.

It wasn’t controlled. It wasn’t elegant.

It wasraw.

Bones snapped. Tendons popped. Flesh tore.

Clothing shredded under the force of muscle expanding, fur ripping from skin like black fire. Kael’s mouth stretched into a snarl, fangs punching through his gums. His scream twisted into a howl.

A monstrous black wolf erupted where the man had been.

Not the sleek, trained predator he usually kept tethered. This was something older, wilder,feral.

The beast that remembered what it was like to kill because it wanted to.

Kael’s paws hit the ground and heran.

He tackled the rogue mid-leap, and they tumbled through snow and soil. Kael’s jaws snapped down on the man’s neck—too hard, too fast. Bone cracked under his teeth, a wet, ugly sound. Blood exploded across the ground, steaming and dark.

He didn’t let go.

Even as the rogue choked and went still.

Even when the trees stopped echoing.

He couldn’t stop.

He didn’t want to.

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