Pain rouses her.
Not a stabbing one.
Incendiary.
A low, throbbing heat in her hips, her stomach, her cunt as if someone lit her on fire from the inside and then told the flames to be quiet. She’s slick with sweat. The bed sheets under her thighs are drenched.
At first, she thought she was bleeding.
She isn’t.
She’s leaking.
The room is dark. She’s in Rael’s quarters, she realizes. Smells him all over the place—pine and smoke and musk and Alpha. She tries to shift but her limbs aren’t obeying her.
Everything aches.
And she’s… exposed.
Naked.
No memory of undressing. No memory of being brought here.
But when she looks down—she shrieks.
There, just above her s*x, seared into her skin in deep-black magic:
Rael’s mark.
An ancient rune of claim and power. Not painted. Not tattooed
