The Marking

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

DAMONI had been waiting to see that pretty human again for days. f*****g days.

After spinning on her maroon barstool, she smiled up at me with those rosy-red cheeks and piercing gray eyes. Between the alcohol running through my veins and my wolf on edge just from seeing her, I couldn’t stop myself from grasping her face and feeling the tingles shoot up my arms.

She stared up at me in a haze, her eyes glossy from the Eclipse beer, and leaned into my touch, running her small and frail fingers over my larger ones. I growled at the gesture, knowing that I shouldn’t be feeling this way toward a human—a damn human who would never be able to survive a shift into a wolf.

But I couldn’t help myself.

When she tugged at the ends of my hair, I slipped my hands around her waist and stepped even closer to her. “Kitten, you don’t want to see what happens when you get me excited,” I murmured into her ear, wanting nothing more than to take her right here, right now.

She giggled and ran her hands down my abdomen, stopping right at the waistband of my jeans and hooking her fingers in the loops. “I think I do.” After a moment, she blushed, her cheeks flaming red, pulled herself away as if she had never done something so bold before, and grabbed her drink.

Before she could take another sip, I took it from her and placed it back on the bar. “No more of this stuff. It’s too strong for humans. Let’s get you home,” I said to her, not liking the way that some wolves from my pack glanced over at her. I grasped her elbow, scolding them through our innate mind link not to even look her way.

She was mine.

“Am I going home with you?” she asked, staring up with hopeful eyes.

I clenched my hands into tight fists, letting my claws slice right through the skin on my palms. If she were a wolf, I’d force her to come home with me. She wouldn’t have a choice. But this woman was human, and I couldn’t take the chance of bringing her home and losing all control of my wolf with her around.

If I accidentally bit her … she’d die during the shift, just like my brother’s mate had.

“No.” I had to force the word out of my mouth.

Confusion crossed her face, brows furrowed. “No?” she asked, the confusion turning to fury. She ripped herself away from me and scanned the bar, turning back to her drink. “Then, I’m staying here.”

“No, you’re not. This is a wolf bar, and you’re drunk. You’re not staying here alone.”

“I am not drunk,” she said, hopping off the stool and nearly stumbling into me.

Growling, I grasped her upper arm to hold her steady and dragged her drunk a*s out the exit with me. Goosebumps darted across my skin at our contact, and my wolf pleaded for power, begging to see her too. Yet I held him back, curled my fingers even tighter around her arm, and pushed her toward my car.

“Let me go! You can’t do this!”

“You’re drunk. I’m taking you home,” I said, shoving her into my car.

There was no way in hell that I’d let her stay here with a bunch of rowdy, horny, and drunk wolves. While humans and wolves didn’t mate, they still slept together whenever they could. And nobody was going to touch what was mine.

Nobody.

“You’re not gonna do anything,” she said, her words slurring.

I slammed the door and hurried to the driver’s side before she could get out. When I slid into the car, I stiffened. Her sweet scent, trapped in such a small space, overwhelmed me to the point that my control almost slipped. Almost. I could feel my wolf on edge, ready to pounce on her whenever I offered the chance.

“Where do you live?” I asked, merging onto the road and heading toward the human sector.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared out the window. “Let me go.”

“Where. Do. You. Live?”

When she didn’t say anything, I snarled and tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “Are you always a brat, or is it only when you drink alcohol?” I asked, letting the words slip from my stupid f*****g mouth.

She turned toward me and narrowed those gray eyes. “Are you always annoying, or is it only when you talk to humans?”

Loving her attention—any attention that she gave me—I growled back and made a U-turn, driving to the forest. “I was just curious because both times I’ve met you, you’ve been very bitchy.”

If she didn’t want to tell me, then I would take her back to the pack house for the night. Just the night. She’d stay in one of the spare rooms, and I’d stay in control.

“WHAT? Was I bitchy when I stood up for your kind to my dad? Was I bitchy when you pushed me against the door? Hmm? Was I bitchy then?” she asked, flaring her nostrils and trying to look intimidating. It was almost cute.

I ignored her comments and drove home through the thick fog that lay among the massive trees. Under the shadows of monstrous oak trees, wolves raced across the cracked pavement streets and into the woods around us. I pulled up to my pack house—a large wooden cabin nestled in the center of Witver Forest—and parked.

“Come with me,” I called over my shoulder to her as I walked up the stone path toward the front door. I needed to keep my distance because her scent—her f*****g scent—was too much for me to handle for any longer.

When she stepped out of the car, some pack members glanced between us and whispered about her being a human. After what had happened to my brother and his mate, I had banned humans from my property, not wanting another human to die because of the innate yet f*******n decisions of one of my packmates.

But she wasn’t just any human.

And she hadn’t told me her address.

That’s why I brought her here, I told myself.

After ushering her into the house and up the spiral staircase, I opened my bedroom door and gestured for her to walk in. I had other spare rooms that I should’ve brought her to. I should’ve. I f*****g should’ve. But I hadn’t. I didn’t want her to sleep anywhere else. I wanted her in my bed with me, wanted her scent all over my sheets, lingering on everything she touched.

“What’s this?” she asked, furrowing her brows and walking into the room, glancing from the large wall-length windows to the dim yellow lights glowing underneath my bed. She brushed her fingers against the beige comforter and then looked back over at me. “Why am I here?”

I placed my keys on the cherry-stained dresser. “You did say that you wanted to go home with me.”

“That was before you called me bitchy. Now, I want to go home.”

My wolf howled at the thought of her leaving. She couldn’t. I couldn’t let her go.

“I’m not going back out. You’re sleeping here tonight.”

“No, I’m not,” she said, stumbling to the door.

Stop her, my wolf commanded.

Before I could stop myself, I stepped in front of her. She placed her palms on my biceps and shoved me backward, but I didn’t move an inch. My talons lengthened slightly, and my canines extended, my wolf clawing to take power and claim the human before him. If I let her go, he’d surely take full control and force me to … to do something that I’d vowed to never do.

Huffing and puffing, she stomped to my closet and then into it, slamming the door behind her. I let out a breath that I hadn’t realized I had been holding and slouched onto the bed, crossing my ankles and smiling at the door. She screamed inside the room and marched back out, her cheeks a rosy red.

I arched a brow. “Are you done embarrassing yourself?”

She snatched a blanket and pillow from the bed and tossed it on the floor. “You’re so annoying.”

“Are you seriously going to sleep on the floor?”

“Well, I’m not going to sleep with you,” she said, twisting and turning on the hardwood until she finally settled on her stomach. She stared at the wall-length windows and out into the woods, lit with the moon. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Damon,” I said, staring down at her, my wolf pleading with me to go sit by her, to lie by her, to touch her like we had at the Eclipse Bar earlier. The feeling of her skin on mine had been … f*****g magical.

She hiked the blanket further up her shoulders to cover herself from me. “I didn’t ask for it either.”

I balled my hands into fists at her blatant disrespect and forced myself to breathe to calm down. Nobody in my pack ever dared to talk back to me like that, and if they did, I would put them in their place faster than they had time to say another word.

But I couldn’t lose it in front of a human.

Yet when she turned around to face me, the moonlight bouncing off her gray eyes, and said, “I’m Mae,” I couldn’t stop myself from ripping the blanket off her, picking her up, and shoving her against those windows, my wolf in complete control.

With the scent of lilacs overwhelming me, tingles from her fingers against my chest electrifying me, her tiny gasp making me shiver in delight, I buried my face in the crook of her neck and drew my nose up the column of her throat. “Mate,” I growled into her ear. “We found our mate.”