CHAPTER 3
492 Words
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Chapter Three: The Claim Beneath My Skin
“I’m not yours,” I whispered, but the lie tasted like ashes.
Valerian looked at me like I’d just ripped the stars out of the sky.
And maybe I had.
Because whatever we once were — whatever was forged in that one stolen night years ago — it had been broken.
Or so I thought.
Until he stepped closer.
And I felt it again.
That ache beneath my ribs.
The place where his claim lived — like ink in my blood, like a scar no one else could see.
“You don’t get to say that,” he murmured. “Not after what we are.”
“You left me, Valerian,” I said, voice sharper than I meant. “You vanished like a ghost and now you’re back? With warnings and riddles and a letter you weren’t even meant to read?”
His jaw clenched. “They wiped my memory, Selene. They cursed me. I would have come back sooner—”
“You don’t get to rewrite history.”
“I’m not rewriting it. I’m here to finish it.”
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The woods howled behind us, low and long. It wasn’t wind. It wasn’t wolves.
It was something older.
Something watching.
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“Why now?” I asked, stepping back. “Why me?”
He blinked slowly, then lifted a hand toward me — not to touch, just to reach.
“Because you're the last thread holding me to who I was. And they want to cut it.”
“Who?”
“The ones who cursed me,” he said, his voice low and bitter. “The High Circle. They never wanted me to choose an omega. Let alone you.”
“Because I’m weak?”
“No,” he said. “Because you're prophecy.”
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My breath hitched.
I laughed, once, sharp. “You sound mad.”
“I am mad,” he said, stepping close again, eyes glowing faintly in the dark. “Mad from craving you every night for five years. Mad from reading your letter and remembering every moment you gave me. Mad from waking up and realizing what they stole from us.”
“You think a few sweet words and a stolen memory can fix that?”
“No,” he said. “But the bond can.”
And then he touched the mark on my neck.
It was faint. A shimmer beneath the skin.
But when his fingers brushed it, everything lit up.
I gasped, knees going weak.
He caught me before I fell, and whispered in my ear:
“They want to kill you because they can’t control you. Because you were made for me, and I was never supposed to love.”
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And just like that, I realized—
The letter I never sent?
It had started a war.
And I was already standing on the front lines.
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- Writer
