Marked By My Father's Enemy

CHAPTER 5

CHLOE'S POV

I opened the door before I had even decided to.

Eric Stone stood in the hallway light, his jacket folded over one arm, his dark hair slightly damp like he had walked here instead of driven. His eyes went straight to my face. Not the mark on my neck. My face. That alone told me something about the kind of man he was, even if I did not want to admit it.

"It's past midnight," I said.

"I know." His voice was low and careful. "I would not have come if it could wait until morning."

I should have closed the door on him. Less than two hours ago I had watched my entire future fall apart in front of two hundred people, and now the man whose mark sat burning on my neck was standing in my doorway at midnight like it was the most normal thing in the world.

I stepped back instead, and he walked inside. The apartment that had felt too big and too quiet for the last hour suddenly felt smaller, in a way that had nothing to do with the furniture and everything to do with him filling the space.

"Talk," I said. "Quickly."

"The pack council called an emergency session for nine o'clock this morning." He did not sit down. He did not glance around the room the way most people did when they stepped into somewhere new for the first time. His attention stayed on me, steady and direct, like he had already decided I was the only thing in the room worth looking at. "An unclaimed mark on a territory female is a violation of pack law. If I do not present you to the council as my acknowledged mate by nine, the mark gets voided. After that, anyone with the rank can challenge for you. Including Hale."

I had already guessed something like this was coming. Brad had said as much in the hallway less than an hour ago, his voice tight with something that looked almost like fear for me. But hearing it from Eric, flat and exact, with no softness around the edges, was different. It made the next nine hours feel like a wall closing in from both sides at once, slow but certain, and I realized I had not even had time to grieve what happened tonight before being asked to fight for my life over it.

"And if you present me?" I asked.

"Then you are under my protection. Formally. Legally. As my acknowledged Luna." His eyes did not move from mine. "No one touches you without going through me first."

He said it without arrogance. It was not a boast. It was a fact, delivered the same way a man reads numbers off a financial report, calm and certain because the numbers do not lie.

"That is not a small thing to ask of someone," I said quietly.

"I am not asking you to love me." His voice dropped a notch. "I am asking you to let me keep you alive while we figure out what this actually is. The rest, we take slow. However long that takes."

The honesty of it surprised me more than anything else he had said tonight, and he had said a lot of surprising things in the last few hours.

My wolf pressed warm against my ribs, the way she always did now whenever he stood close to me. The mark on my neck gave a slow, deep pulse, like it recognized he was three feet away and wanted him closer than that.

I lifted my hand to it without meaning to.

"Still hurts?" he asked. Something in his voice shifted. Quieter than before.

"It comes and goes."

He crossed the space between us before I had even decided whether I wanted that to happen. His hand rose slowly, not touching yet, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his palm near the side of my neck.

"May I?"

I should have said no. Every part of my training, every lesson my father had ever beaten into me about keeping my guard up around powerful men, told me to step back.

I nodded instead.

His fingers brushed the edge of the mark, light and careful, and the burn under my skin eased all at once, like a breath I had been holding for hours finally let go. My whole body softened toward him before I could stop it, leaning slightly into his palm. From the way his breath caught, I think he felt that too, and it surprised him just as much as it surprised me.

Neither of us moved for a long moment. His hand stayed where it was, warm against my neck, and the air between us felt thinner than it had any right to. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears, and beneath it, slower and heavier, his.

"This is not how I expected tonight to go," he said quietly.

"Neither did I," I admitted, and I meant it more than he probably realized.

He stepped back first. Whatever that moment had been, he was the one with enough control to end it, and I hated how disappointed that small fact made me feel.

He cleared his throat and reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded set of papers and a pen. "If you agree to this, I need it filled out before nine. Full legal name, pack registry number, parentage. The council is strict about documentation, especially when there is a chance someone tries to dispute the claim."

He set the papers down on my kitchen counter and held the pen toward me.

I took it.

"Full name first," he said, tapping the top line with one finger.

"Chloe Maxwell," I said, writing as I spoke, the pen moving easily across the paper. "Daughter of Gareth Maxwell, Gamma of the Armstrong pack."

The pen scratched against the paper in the sudden quiet that followed.

I looked up.

Eric had gone completely still.

Not the controlled stillness from the elevator earlier tonight. Not the careful, measured stillness from the lobby afterward. This was something else entirely. His face had emptied out, like something behind his eyes had simply stopped working mid sentence.

"Say that again," he said. His voice had dropped to barely above a whisper.

"Chloe Maxwell." I said it slower this time, watching his face carefully now. "My father is Gareth Maxwell. Why does that matter?"

He did not answer right away. The warmth that had been in his eyes only minutes ago, when his fingers were still resting against the mark on my neck, was gone now. Replaced by something cold and far away, like he was looking straight through me at a memory I had no part of and never would.

"Gareth Maxwell," he repeated, almost to himself, testing the name like it tasted wrong in his mouth.

Then his eyes lifted to mine, and what I saw there made my wolf go completely silent for the first time all night.

"Your father," he said slowly, each word landing like a stone dropped into still water, "burned my pack to the ground when I was twelve years old."