Page 5 of Blood Marked

“Stay away,” he growled to himself.

But fate didn’t give a damn about what Kael Fenrir wanted.

And tonight, under the moons, he’d find out just how much of himself he was going to lose.

THREE

SELENE

The moon hung low and swollen in the sky, a pale twin to the fire simmering in Selene’s chest. Two moons, bleeding silver over the mountains, casting ghostlight across the ancient courtyard.

The stones beneath her feet were cold and slick with mist. Her shoes made soft, traitorous sounds as she was led toward the ritual platform—each step a tick on the clock counting down her freedom.

She hated that she looked calm. She’d spent years perfecting that mask—diplomat’s daughter, silver-tongued and smooth-faced—but beneath her skin, her pulse was a wild, galloping thing.

“Don’t falter,”Elias had told her when he’d dropped her off the day before, back when he still had the nerve to look her in the eye.

“You’re the key to peace.”

Peace. Right.

Because peace had always tasted like blood and bone and sacrifice.

Her cloak trailed behind her in a whisper of crimson velvet. She wore a ceremonial tunic beneath it, high-collared andsleeveless, made of a silvery-white weave that shimmered faintly under the moons. She hated how delicate it made her look. How foreign.

Shifters lined the edges of the courtyard like statues carved from myth—wolf-born warriors draped in fur and armor, their golden eyes flicking to her with expressions that ran the spectrum from curiosity to contempt.

And at the center of it all, as ancient and revered as anything in their world, rose the Stone of Binding.

A circular slab half-sunk into the earth, veined with cracks that glowed faintly beneath the moonlight. The runes danced across its surface like they were breathing—alive, watching, waiting. Selene had read about this stone in half-buried Council reports and diplomatic briefings. She’d heard the legends whispered in the Council chambers when they thought she wasn’t listening. How the stone had been used in the old days for mate rituals and magical pacts. How the magic in it was real once—how it could burn destiny into your flesh, bind you to another in ways even death couldn’t undo.

But that was all ceremonial now.

Symbolic.

At least, that’s what they said.

Her father had tried to reassure her during those last days in the Capital. “The Stone won’t choose unless the prophecy sees fit,” he’d said, mouth tight. “And even then, it’s a flicker. A tradition. Nothing more.”

But Selene had read between his words.

She’d seen the way he refused to meet her gaze when she asked about Kael Fenrir, about the ancient writings, about the one who would bear the Mark beside the heir of Fenrir’s line.

And even though no one said it outright, she knew.

She knew why they’d sent her instead of another ambassador. Why they kept talking about symbolism like it wasstrategy. Why Kael looked at her like a storm barely holding itself back.

She wasn’t just here to stand in a room and smile.

She was here becausesomething in her bloodline matched something in their legends.

She was the variable the prophecy had left unnamed.

And across from the stone—Kael.

He stood like a storm given shape, shadowed in the folds of his black ceremonial cloak. The moonlight painted sharp lines across the muscles of his jaw and the slope of his bare shoulders. Ash-blond hair slicked back, except for one lock that still fell across his brow.

Selene’s breath caught before she could stop it. He didn’t look like royalty. He looked like ruin.

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