Marked By My Father's Enemy

CHAPTER 3

CHLOE'S POV

I stood completely still in the marble lobby with my fingers pressed to my neck and my heart loud in my own ears.

The burn was steady. Low and deep, like something that had decided to stay.

Across the lobby, Eric Stone had not moved.

He stood at the elevator doors with his collar still crooked, watching me with those dark, steady eyes. No panic. No apology. Just that same total calm that had been there since the moment he stepped into that elevator. Like a man who had done something deliberate and was simply waiting for the situation to catch up.

I walked back across the lobby toward him.

"You marked me," I said. My voice came out level. I was proud of that.

"I did." He said it simply, like a fact on a spreadsheet.

"Without my consent."

Something shifted along his jaw. Not guilt exactly. Something more measured. "The bond marks on its own when the connection is this strong. I did not choose the timing any more than you chose the heat."

"Do not talk to me about the heat."

"You started that kiss," he said.

I did not answer. He was right, and we both knew it, and that was the worst part of all of this.

He tilted his head slightly, looking at the side of my neck. "Go somewhere quiet and let it settle. The first few hours after a mark can be disorienting."

"I was engaged three hours ago." I kept my voice low. Around us the lobby continued normally, guests moving past, staff at the desk, nobody aware that my entire life had just been taken apart and put back together into something I did not recognize. "I do not know you. I have never met you before tonight. And now I am standing here with your mark on my neck."

"I know," he said. For the first time, something in his voice shifted. Not soft exactly. But less certain. "I know that."

I looked at him for one long second.

Then I turned and walked out through the glass doors.

The night air was cold and sharp on my face. I flagged a cab and got in, pulling my coat collar high before the driver could see anything.

"Montview Street, please," I said.

I sat back and put my phone face down on the seat beside me.

The city slid past outside. The Full Mating Moon hung fat and pale above the buildings, turning every rooftop silver at the edges. My wolf was quiet inside me but not in the old way. The silence I had grown up with had been empty, like a room with all the furniture removed. This was different. This felt like a room with someone sitting in it, waiting.

That felt like its own kind of betrayal. She had been absent my entire life and chose tonight, of all nights, to finally show up.

I pressed two fingers against my neck.

I had sat through enough pack education to know what marking meant. It was not decoration. A mark was a declaration written in the oldest language wolves had. It told every wolf in range one thing: claimed. Off limits. Mine. An unmarked wolf could be pursued, challenged for, taken by someone with enough rank or force. A marked wolf belonged to someone.

I stared out the window.

Brad had been going to announce our engagement tonight. That was gone. Three years of chosen bond, gone. And I was now marked by the most feared Alpha in the eastern territory, whose name made senior pack leaders choose their words carefully.

I did not know whether to feel frightened or something else entirely.

My wolf pressed warmly against my ribs and offered no useful opinion.

The cab stopped outside my building. I stepped out and stood still for a moment with the night air on my face, steadying myself. I had been taking things one step at a time since I was sixteen and realized my father cared more about the pack's opinion of him than he had ever cared about me. I was good at it.

One thing at a time.

I took the elevator up.

The doors opened on my floor.

Brad Armstrong was standing outside my apartment door.

His tie was loose, his top button undone. There was something in his face I had not seen in a long time, something that had no right to affect me anymore. It looked a lot like fear.

He looked at my neck.

I watched the exact second he found it. His jaw locked. His shoulders squared. His eyes moved from the mark to my face and back again, like he was making sure he had counted correctly.

"That is not possible," he said. His voice was very quiet. "You were barely gone an hour."

I said nothing.

"Who marked you."

Not a question. It was more like a man forcing himself to say something out loud that he already knew.

The mark pulsed once at the side of my neck, low and steady, like something announcing itself.

Brad's face went very still.

"Stone," he said. One word, like a door slamming shut. "Eric Stone marked you."

He pressed one hand flat against my doorframe and lowered his head.

When he looked back up, the fear was gone. What replaced it was worse.

"Listen to me carefully," he said. "Eric Stone has spent eight months fighting the pack council over the traditional Luna selection ceremony. Every major pack in this territory has been pressuring him to take a Luna from one of their bloodlines." His eyes dropped to my neck again. "If he has marked you, every one of those packs will come after you directly."

I started to speak. He cut across me.

"That is not even the worst part." His voice dropped. "There is a man who has been moving through pack gatherings for months. He calls himself a collector. He takes marked females from rival Alphas and uses them as leverage. His name is Marcus Hale."

The cold that moved through me had nothing to do with the night air.

"He was in that building tonight," Brad said. "And he saw you leave."