Page 76 of Blood Marked

He tore through the passage, mind racing. His body already shifting as fury overtook thought. Veilroot still lingered in the air—muted now, but enough to mask a scent trail.

They planned this.They fucking planned this.

She was gone.

And it washisfault.

Because he let her believe he didn’t care. Let her walk alone, think she wasn’t worth guarding, wasn’t worth fighting for anymore.

Kael snarled.

He reached the exit to the ridgeline and found the scout team Nyra had dispatched—dead.

Clean kills. Throats slashed. Eyes open. A warning. A message.

They’d taken her and wanted him to find the trail.

He didn’t stop to call for backup. He never did. He didn’t trust anyone else to get there in time.

He shifted fully—pain forgotten—his wolf form bigger now, sharper, darker. Powered by rage and bond-magic that refused to die no matter how he’d tried to bury it.

He ran like his soul was on fire.

It took less than an hour to find the scent trail.

Another to follow it across the eastern ravines and down through the hollowed roots of the Whispering Glen.

The Rising Flame’s camp wasn’t hidden. It was amonument.

Torches burned in a ring. Tents staked with bone. Symbols carved into bark and rock, older than any shifter creed. A broken altar at the center, bound in iron and Veilthread.

And Selene, chained at its base.

Her eyes met his the moment he stepped from the trees. Wide. Bright. Unafraid. But her face was pale, her wrists bloodied, her chest rising in shallow, measured breaths.

He hadn’t reached her in time.

A sigil beneath her glowed blue-white. Whatever they were planning had already begun.

And Kael. Lost. It.

He didn’t roar, heexploded.

His wolf hit the nearest cultist. Bone cracked. Screams rose. He tore through them like they were paper. No technique. No finesse. Just vengeance.

He caught the first by the throat and it sprayed across the altar’s edge. The second he slammed into the dirt, stomping down until the skull caved under his massive paws.

A third lunged toward Selene with a blade to threaten him.

Kael’s jaws met the man’s shoulder that wielded the sword and ripped it clean off.

Screams. So many screams.

But all Kael heard was the bond in his blood screaminghers.

He shifted back, his swords and clothes still strapped to his back now that he was in human form, thanks to the enchantresses that worked in the war room. He reached the altar and Varyn stepped between them cloaked in red. Smiling.

“You’re too late,” he said.

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