The Scar
1065 Words
Morning came gray and cold.
Ella woke to the sound of a key turning in the lock. She sat up fast, her heart hammering, instinctively pulling her sleeve down over the silvery thorn mark on her arm.
It was just a young woman with a tray. Breakfast. She set it down without meeting Ella’s eyes and scurried out. The lock clicked shut behind her.
Ella stared at the heavy oak door. *Room service in a werewolf prison. Great.*
An hour later, the door opened again. This time, it was Marcus.
"Alpha wants to see you," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument.
"Alpha can come to me," Ella shot back, crossing her arms.
Marcus’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. "He anticipated you'd say that. He also told me to inform you that if you want the run of the grounds today, you’ll follow me."
Ella weighed her options. Pride or fresh air?
She followed.
The manor looked different in daylight. Less like a Gothic nightmare, more like an ancient, breathing fortress. The stone walls were worn smooth by centuries of hands. Warriors passed them in the halls—men and women with sharp, predatory eyes and unnervingly quiet footsteps. They all stopped to stare at her.
Marcus led her to a massive study at the back of the manor. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a heavy mahogany desk sat in front of a window overlooking the lake.
Damon stood by the fireplace. He was dressed in a dark, fitted sweater that accentuated the sheer, brutal width of his shoulders. His dark hair was slightly tousled, and his silver eyes locked onto her the second she crossed the threshold.
The air in the room instantly grew heavy.
"Sit," he commanded.
Ella remained standing. "I prefer to stand. What do you want?"
Damon’s jaw tightened. He closed the distance between them in two long strides, stopping just inches away. The scent of crushed pine and ozone wrapped around her, making her pulse jump.
"I told you we would deal with the infection," he said, his voice a low, freezing baritone. "Give me your arm."
"It's fine. It stopped burning."
"Ella." The Alpha command laced in his tone made her instincts hum. Her body betrayed her, her arm rising slightly before she could clench her fist.
Damon reached out, his large, warm fingers wrapping around her wrist. He pushed her sleeve up, exposing the intricate, silvery thorn tattoo wrapping around her pale skin.
He stared at it, his expression hardening into a mask of pure, glacial rejection. With his free hand, he picked up a small jar of dark, pungent herbal paste from the desk.
"Our physician made this. It will suppress the mark. It will sever the... tether."
He dipped his thumb into the dark paste and pressed it against the silver thorns.
The moment the herb touched her skin, a violent shockwave of static electricity snapped between them.
Ella gasped, her knees buckling as a sharp, phantom pain ripped through her chest. At the exact same second, Damon let out a harsh, guttural hiss. He dropped the jar, stumbling back a step, his chest heaving as if he’d just been struck.
The dark paste had turned to ash on her skin, blowing away into the air. The silver thorns beneath glowed brighter, pulsing with a defiant, rhythmic heat.
Damon stared at his own hand, his eyes flashing a dangerous, luminous silver. His body was rejecting the cure. His wolf was refusing to let the mark be erased.
"It seems," Damon whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, suppressed rage, "my biology disagrees with the treatment."
Ella clutched her arm, her breath coming in shallow gasps. But as she looked up at him, her trained veterinary eyes caught something else.
When Damon had stumbled back, his sleeve had ridden up his forearm.
There, on the inside of his left wrist, was a scar.
It wasn't a normal wound. The tissue around it was blackened and webbed with dark, necrotic veins that crawled up toward his elbow. It looked exactly like the etched symbols on the silver bullets she had pulled from his wolf body. It looked dead. Cold.
"That's not a scar," Ella blurted out, her professional instinct overriding her fear. "The tissue around it is completely necrotic. It’s spreading. It looks like... a localized venom. Or frostbite."
Damon’s head snapped up. The vulnerability in his eyes vanished, replaced by a wall of impenetrable ice. He yanked his sleeve down violently.
"You are a veterinarian, Ella. Not my physician," he said, his tone dripping with lethal warning. "You will not speak of what you see. You will not ask questions."
He turned his back to her, staring into the dead fireplace. "Marcus will escort you to the grounds. Do not go past the tree line."
***
The grounds were breathtaking. A sprawling lake, dense ancient pines, and mountains piercing the gray sky. It would have been a paradise, if she weren't a prisoner.
Marcus walked beside her, his hands clasped behind his back.
"The mark on his wrist," Ella said quietly, keeping her eyes on the path. "I've seen necrotic tissue before. From snake venom, from severe infections. But that... that looks like it's eating him from the inside out. What did that to him?"
Marcus didn't answer immediately. He stopped walking, looking out over the dark water of the lake.
"Not all wounds bleed, Ella," Marcus finally said, his voice heavy with an ancient, sorrowful weight. "Some are written into the blood. Into the soul."
"But it's destroying the tissue. If he's a werewolf, why doesn't he heal?"
Marcus turned to her, his weathered face grim. "Because it wasn't meant to kill his body. It was meant to take something else."
"Take what?"
Marcus held her gaze for a long, piercing moment. "The ability to feel. The things that make a man... whole."
He started walking again, leaving Ella standing in the cold wind.
She looked back up at the manor. At the window of the study where the ruthless, untouchable Alpha was standing.
*The curse is eating him from the inside out,* she thought, the realization chilling her to the bone. *Whatever is in his veins... it's stealing his mind. And somehow, my touch is the only thing that cools the burn.*
And somehow, she was the only one who could see it.
- Writer
