Chapter 91
I slipped from my room before dawn fully broke, hoping for just a few minutes of stillness in the bathhouse before the chaos of this heath. announcement began.
Steam hung in the air like a second skin, curling along the vaulted ceiling and clinging to my hair. The scent of lavender and eucalyptus wrappers around me, warm and heady. For once, I wasn’t thinking about rankings or whispered alliances or who might be watching.
1 stepped out of my robe and folded it neatly on the edge of the stone bench. My hands trembled a little, not from fear–just exhaustion, Everything lately had been a lot to take in. The trials. The lies. The way Damon’s eyes burned through me one day and avoided me the next.
The mark he left on my skin–quiet proof of something I didn’t fully understand.
I slid into the water, biting back a gasp as the heat licked over my thighs, my ribs, my shoulders. I sank until it hugged my collarbones, let my head tip back against the slick tile, and finally let myself breathe.
For a moment, I remembered.
His hands. The weight of them. The way his lips brushed my skin, almost reverent. The bite of pain and the rush that followed–ownership, yes, but it went both ways.
I’d touched the mark a dozen times since, wondering if it would fade. If it already meant less to him than it did to me.
My fingers drifted to it without thinking. It didn’t sting anymore, but my body remembered.
I let my hand fall away and reached toward the edge of the pool for a cloth. That’s when I saw movement–just a flicker–out of the corner of my eye. A figure stepped through the steam and I froze.
Nora. Tall, poised, already wrapped in a towel like she was a perfectly carved marble statue. Her braid hung over one shoulder, effortless and perfect. He eyes swept the room–then landed squarely on me.
My blood went cold.
I turned instinctively, pulling my hair forward, ducking my head, angling away from her. My towel was out of reach. I sank lower into the water, heat suddenly oppressive against my chest.
She was still looking at me. Not just looking–studying. My heart hammered.
“Morning,” I said, forcing calm into my voice, even as my skin prickled with panic.
She paused before answering, “Morning.” She walked past slowly, and her gaze–gods, her gaze–lingered right where it shouldn’t. On the side of my neck. On what she might’ve seen.
Then she was gone, swallowed up by the steam.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Every breath felt like a workout just trying to get air into my lungs. Every second stretched too long.
Did she see it? Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe I turned fast enough. Maybe it was hidden. Maybe she was just… watching me, not Damon’s mark.
But her look–that tiny, precise flicker of her eyes–it lingered.
I rose from the water carefully, keeping my back turned. My fingers closed around the towel like it was armor. I wrapped it tight, holding it to my throat I stepped onto the stone floor.
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Chapter 91
I didn’t look back. But felt her gaze like a blade Imtween my shoulders.
I dried off slowly, each movement deliberate, like rushing might somehow draw more attention to what had just happened in Path pounding, but a tight coll of unease still sat beneath my ribs.
I told myself I was being paranoid. That Nora was always watching everyone always calculating it was just another moment of the same de couldn’t unsee the way her gaze had landed on my neck.
She didn’t say anything, I reminded Ruby. If she’d seen something, really seen it, she would’ve said something. Would’ve smirked. Probably called in cut on it already.
Ruby simply chuffed at me, annoyed that I would hide the mark at all.
Still, she didn’t press. Not with words, at least. But I felt her silence like a nudge–impatient, protective. I knew what she wanted: stop shanking, stand
taller. Let them see the mark and burn.
Still, when I returned to my room, I didn’t reach for the dress I’d originally laid out. Too low at the collar, Too exposed.
Instead, I pulled a soft, high–necked tunic from the back of my armoire–still elegant, still appropriate, but safer. I tugged it on and adjusted the neckline twice before letting myself breathe.
My hair was still damp, curling slightly at the ends. I twisted it into a loose braid and tucked it over my shoulder, making sure it fell across the spot where Damon’s mark lived just beneath the fabric. It would have to do.
There was a soft knock at my door. I didn’t jump, but my muscles went tight, shoulders drawn.
“Li – Elena?” Emma’s voice drifted through, warm and tentative. “T
gathering in the Great Hall.”
I opened the door, and she took one look at me before her brow creased. “I know things are… how they are, but are you alright?”
I nodded quickly. “Just nerves.”
She hesitated, eyes flicking to my neck and then away again like she wanted go before they start without us.”
to ask something but thought better of it. I smiled, stiff and practiced. “Let’s
Candidates passed us in twos and threes, dressed in their finest, eyes shining with hope or hunger. I kept my gaze forward, spine straight, expression unreadable.
It was the same posture I’d learned as a child–shoulders down, chin up, don’t give them the satisfaction of watching you flinch.
Nora hadn’t said a word–but silence was its own kind of warning. A coiled thing. I didn’t trust it.
But I couldn’t shake the memory of Nora’s eyes. The stillness in her expression. That almost–smile that felt like a trap being set.
I caught my reflection in the glass pane of a gilded hallway window. My braid was in place. My tunic immaculate. I looked every bit the poised candidat they expected.
And yet-
My fingers drifted to the fabric just beneath my throat, pressing lightly where my skin still remembered his touch, his bite. I didn’t know what this mark meant anymore. If it was a promise–or if the bond would fully solidify if I marked him in return.
I let my hand fall and kept walking.
When we reached the Great Hall, the air was already electric. Girls lined the velvet staircases and stood clustered near the dais. Th statues, unmoving, unreadable.
rs sat like carve
My eyes scanned the room until I remember that Damon wasn’t here. He was off visiting other Packs–probably grateful to have missed this charade.
Chapter 91
I stepped into my place near the front, flanked by Nora on one side and another candidate I didn’t spend much time with Talia on the other, I dideli
look at either of them.
But I felt Nora turn slightly, her gaze brushing me like a whisper.
My braid shifted with the movement of my shoulders, but I didn’t reach up to adjust it. I kept my hands at my sides.
The silence before the announcement stretched long and thin. I stood tall.
If she saw the mark… let her wonder.
Damon would choose publicly soon enough.
