BLOOD MOON MATE: Claimed by the Enemy Alpha

Countdown

"I need Maren," Dez said, already moving for the door. "Now."

"Who's Maren?" Wren's hand hadn't left her collarbone, fingers pressed over the mark like she could hold it in place by will alone.

"Oldest healer we've got. If anyone still living understands binding marks, it's her." Dez didn't wait for a response before disappearing down the hall at a run.

The room felt smaller with her gone. Wren could hear her own heartbeat too clearly, could feel the mark's faint warmth pulsing in time with it, or maybe that was just her imagination trying to make sense of something that didn't want to be understood yet.

Ronan knelt in front of Wren, taking her wrist gently, turning it over like he expected the mark to have spread there too. It hadn't. Just the one spot, just above her heartbeat.

"Does it hurt?"

"It stung when it appeared. Now it's just warm." She swallowed hard. "Corin's killed him. Is this going to—"

"We don't know that yet."

"That's not a no."

He didn't have an answer for that either, and the silence sat heavy between them until Dez returned minutes later with an older woman in tow — silver hair braided back tight, sharp eyes that moved over Wren like she was reading a page instead of a person.

"Let me see it," Maren said, no preamble.

Wren pulled her collar aside again. Maren leaned close, studying the mark without touching it, murmuring something under her breath that wasn't quite English — older, rougher, the kind of language that sounded like it belonged to trees and stone instead of people.

"This isn't the same as the guard's mark," she said finally, straightening.

"How do you know?" Ronan asked.

"His was carved in. Forced, deliberate, meant to control. This—" Maren gestured at Wren's skin without touching it. "This bloomed from inside her. That's not a binding placed on someone. That's a binding already living in the blood, finally surfacing."

"Surfacing because of what," Wren asked. "The vision? The chest?"

"Because the seal that held it back broke." Maren's expression stayed carefully neutral, the kind of neutral that came from decades of delivering hard news gently. "Whatever your family buried in you before you were old enough to remember it, child, it's waking up."

Wren's stomach turned over.

"Waking up to do what."

"That, I can't tell you yet. Marks like this were rare even in the old days. I've read about them. I've never seen one confirmed on a living person." Maren circled slowly, studying the mark from another angle. "But marks tied to bloodline rather than compulsion usually follow a pattern. They deepen with the moon's cycle. They complete on a specific one."

Ronan went very still.

"Complete how."

"I don't know yet. Could be a true shift, unlocking abilities dormant since birth. Could be something else entirely — some of the old bindings were designed to kill the bearer outright if the wrong conditions were met, as a final safeguard against the wrong person claiming a bloodline's power." Maren's gaze flicked between Ronan and Wren, weighing how much truth to hand over at once. "I won't lie to either of you. I don't know which this is yet. I've only ever read about marks like this in texts half my age couldn't verify as fact."

"So we're guessing."

"We're preparing. There's a difference, even if it doesn't feel like one right now."

"How long do we have to find out?"

Maren studied the mark once more, tracing an invisible line along its edge without touching skin.

"It's already responding to lunar pull," she said slowly. "I'd guess it completes on the next full moon. Maybe the one after, if we're lucky."

The room went silent.

Ronan's face had gone the color of old ash.

"The next full moon," he repeated. "That's the same deadline Voss gave us."

Wren's blood ran cold.

"That's not a coincidence," she said. "It can't be."

"No," Ronan said slowly, working through it out loud. "It's not. Voss didn't pick that date arbitrarily. He knows something about this mark. He's known this whole time."

"Then he's known longer than any of us have," Wren said, voice shaking. "He's had twenty-two years to plan around something I found out about ten minutes ago."

"How would he know something about a mark that only just appeared on me an hour ago?"

"Because it didn't just appear," Maren said quietly. "It was always there, waiting for the right conditions. Voss has spent twenty-two years hunting the last Thorne. A man that patient doesn't guess at deadlines. He calculates them."

Ronan's jaw locked, something dawning behind his eyes that looked less like fear and more like fury.

"He's not just trying to kill her before she gets stronger," he said. "He's been counting down to this exact moon the entire time. He set his deadline to land right when whatever this mark does actually happens."

"That means everything he's done since she arrived — the fence attack, the transmitter, showing up at our gate — none of it was improvised," Wren said. "It was all just him buying time until the calendar caught up."

Maren's expression didn't change, but her voice dropped lower.

"Which means whatever Voss is planning for that night," she said, "it isn't a war summit at all."

"Then what is it," Wren asked, though some part of her already dreaded the answer forming in the silence before Maren spoke.

"It's a harvest," Maren said quietly. "He's not waiting for the full moon to kill you, child. He's waiting for it to finish whatever this mark was built to unlock — and take it from you the moment it does."

Nobody spoke for a long moment after that.

Then Wren's collarbone erupted in fire.

She cried out, hand flying to the mark on reflex, and found it burning hot under her palm, brighter now, visible even through her fingers in a dull red glow that hadn't been there a second ago.

"Wren!" Ronan caught her as her knees buckled.

Maren's face went sharp with alarm. "It shouldn't be doing that yet. Not for weeks."

"Why is it doing it now," Ronan demanded.

Maren's eyes dropped to the mark, then lifted slowly to meet Wren's, something close to fear finally cracking through her composure.

"Because naming what it's for isn't harmless," she said. "Marks like this listen. We just told it we understand its purpose."

The glow beneath Wren's skin pulsed once, hard, like something on the other end had heard her too.