BLESSING LUNA RISING

THE BURNING MARK

CHAPTER 4:

The black ice doors slammed shut behind us with a sound like a war drum.

The howling stopped.

Inside Nocturne Keep was not cold. It was warm. Unnaturally warm. Fire ran in veins through the black ice walls, like lava trapped in glass. The air smelled like him — pine and smoke and sin — but magnified a thousand times. This was his lair. His Kingdom.

And every single Lycan inside was staring at me.

Warriors lined the great hall, two stories tall, in black armor with their helmets off. Their eyes were all silver. All glowing. All fixed on the girl wrapped in their King's midnight cloak, being carried like a bride.

No — like a sacrifice.

Darius didn't set me down. He carried me straight through the hall, his boots echoing. No one spoke. No one dared breathe until we passed.

When we reached the end, at the foot of a staircase made of solid obsidian, he finally did.

He set me on my feet. Slowly. Like I would shatter. His hands stayed on my waist.

"Elara," he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear, but every Lycan in the hall was listening. "Look at me. Only at me."

I tried. Gods, I tried. But the mark on my wrist was no longer pulsing. It was screaming.

The silver fire that had been crawling up my veins all through the chariot ride suddenly exploded. It shot from my wrist to my shoulder, to my neck, to my chest. White-hot, branding, burning away everything Kael had ever made me feel like I was.

I screamed. It tore out of me, raw and not human. I collapsed to my knees on the black ice floor, clutching my arm.

"ELARA!"

Darius was on his knees in front of me in an instant. For the first time since I met him, the Lycan King looked afraid. Not of me. For me.

"It's too early," he growled, more to himself than to me. "Her blood is too thin, she was suppressed too