Shirley
The air outside the chapel clung to me like damp ash. Even after leaving Elias’s presence, I felt his voice in my bones, smooth and poisonous, twisting itself into places I didn’t want it to reach. Kill a werewolf to awaken the mark. The words circled endlessly in my mind as though they’d been branded into my skull.
The hunter’s mark on my neck throbbed faintly, a reminder of everything I was trying not to be.
The walk back to town was slow, each step weighted with the war going on inside me. I should have felt relieved to be away from Elias and his niece, but instead, my chest tightened with something worse than fear—doubt. That was his trick, wasn’t it? He didn’t need claws or fangs to make me bleed; he just needed to plant a seed.
And God help me, it had rooted deep.
If El
