Page 87 of Blood Marked

“And the bond?”

She stepped closer. Pressed her palm to his chest. “It’s ours.”

They didn’t need a priest. The Veil bore witness.

They didn’t need vows read from old scrolls. Their hearts had already made them. But they spoke anyway—because words mattered. Because this moment wastheirs.

“I don’t bind you to me out of tradition,” Selene said, her voice carrying through the silent trees. “Or duty. I bind you because in every moment I was meant to be something for someone else—you reminded me I could be mine first.”

Kael’s jaw clenched, emotion flashing behind those storm-blue eyes.

“I bind you,” he said lowly, “because the only thing more terrifying than losing myself to you… was never letting myselfhaveyou.”

Their hands glowed softly between them as their marks reappeared—burned into their skin anew, not from ritual, not from blood.

But fromchoice.

The bond wasn’t angry anymore. It wasradiant.

It shimmered like moonlight on still water, dancing from her wrist to his, a pulse of life that said:

You are mine. And I am yours.

Not fate.

Love.

When Kael kissed her beneath the twin moons, Selene didn’t feel like she was giving something away.

She felt whole. Claimed. Chosen. And finally, home.

They said no name for Ruarc Fenrir during the ceremony.

There was no body.

No crown to pass.

Just rumor.

Some whispered the old alpha had fallen in the battle’s chaos, carried off by the Veil or lost to wounds no healer could trace. Others claimed he had fled, unable to face the legacy he’d tried so hard to control unraveling at the hands of his son.

Kael hadn’t spoken of it since.

He hadn’t needed to.

He stood in his father’s place now, not because he’d claimed it.

Because the Court hadgivenit.

And Selene had stood beside him not as the human envoy sent to negotiate peace.

But as his equal.

THIRTY-NINE

KAEL

The twin moons hung low by the time they returned to the high chamber—their chamber now.

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