Page 84 of Mortal Shift
His eyes twitched to my legs, seemingly of their own accord, and his gaze lingered there a moment longer than necessary before trekking back up to meet mine.
“I’ll make sure you don’t get left behind. I swear it. But my pack needs me—us—to do this.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, because all the rest of this crap aside, I couldn’t doubt the sincerity in his voice when he spoke about his pack.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder, but the door was still shut, and then his eyes snagged on Ling.
“Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of her,” I told him flatly, before he could go getting any ideas.
“Who even are you?” he asked Ling, his brow furrowing, and she blushed.
“I’m no-one.”
“She’s my friend,” I said firmly. “And the only one I have here, so anything you have to say to me—”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time.” He sucked in another breath. “Look, Kallan’s pack is growing stronger every day. Some of the other packs are starting to question my father’s strength—my pack’s strength. I’m their heir, and I haven’t been on a single hunt since I got here. It doesn’t look good on us.”
“Sure you have. You were on the first hunt.”
He smiled bitterly. “What do you think happened with you ignored a direct order from our academy alpha, Cali?”
I shrugged. “Pretty sure he yelled at me in our next lesson.”
He ground his teeth together and yanked the neck of his t-shirt down to reveal a jagged scar marring his trapezius. A gasp echoed round the room, and it took me a moment to realize it was mine. I stretched a hand out tentatively, a moth to a flame, then yanked it back.
“What happened?”
“I told Ryker to give me your punishment,” he said, releasing his t-shirt and covering the jagged mess.
“You…you took that for me?”
His face softened a fraction, and he shrugged one shoulder, not quite managing nonchalant. “You’re my mate.”
“But still… Wait, why hasn’t it healed?”
He laughed, and tossed a deliberate look around the room.
“All these books, and you can’t answer that question?” He turned to Ling. “You want to tell her?”
I shared a look with her, and she shrugged.
“Sorry, I, um, don’t know,” she said quietly, and Cole’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “I’m not a shifter.”
“Clearly.” He turned back to me. “When an alpha places a punishment mark on a member of his pack, it stays there for as long as he intends.”
“But you’re not in his pack. You’re in Cain’s.”
“The rules are different here. You heard him in our first lesson. Inside Darkveil, he’s our alpha. So he can mark me for as long as he decides.”
I swallowed, and my voice came out as a raspy whisper. “And how long did he decide?”
“Just until the end of our first year. It was just a warning.”
“Just a warning? Hemaimedyou, Cole.”
He laughed. “Maimed is a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”
