Claimed by the Rejected Alpha

Hello, darling

Chapter 4: Two Marks, One Moon

"Run," Kael said.

This time, nobody argued.

We tore through the forest, three wolves in the dark. Mine was white as moonlight, Kael's was the color of ash, Dominic's a living shadow. The howls behind us rose and fell like a funeral song.

I had never run like this. Every muscle sang. Every scent was a story. And pressed against my left flank, close enough that his heat burned through my fur, ran Dominic.

Left, his voice brushed my mind through a bond that should have been dead. There's a cave beyond the ridge.

Since when do I take orders from you?

Since I'm the only one who's been to Ashfang's border caves, he growled. Humor me, Lyra.

Do not say my name like that.

Like what?

Like you've been starving for it.

His silence was answer enough, and it made my heart do something dangerous.

The cave was a narrow c***k in the rock, damp and low, barely big enough for three. Kael sealed the entrance with a boulder and a muttered curse. Then there was only darkness, dripping water, and the sound of three people trying to breathe quietly.

I shifted back first, shivering, clutching Kael's jacket around me. Dominic shifted a moment later. He was still naked, and I was suddenly, painfully aware of every inch of him in the dark.

"Put something on," I snapped.

"I have nothing."

Kael tossed him a pair of spare trousers from a hidden stash. "Try not to look so pleased with yourself, Blackthorn."

"I'm not."

"Your scent says otherwise."

"Your scent," Dominic said coldly, "has been all over her for an hour."

The air in the cave tightened like a drawn bowstring.

"Stop it, both of you!" I pressed my palms against my temples. "Someone is hunting me. Someone my father was afraid of. I don't have time for your territorial nonsense."

"Then let me see your shoulder," Dominic said, softer. "You're bleeding."

I hadn't noticed. The rogue's bite had opened a shallow gash, and blood was trickling down my arm. Before I could refuse, Dominic was kneeling in front of me, tearing a strip from his sleeve.

His fingers were warm. Careful. They brushed the edge of the wound, then my collarbone, and my breath caught so loudly I thought the whole cave heard it.

He lifted his eyes to mine.

The silver in them had gone molten.

"I didn't want to reject you," he said, barely above a whisper. "Not for a single second. I stood in that hall and every cell in my body was screaming mine."

"Then why?"

"Because someone was watching." His thumb moved over the bandage, slow, tender, devastating. "And if they'd known you were my mate, they'd have killed you before dawn."

My throat tightened. "Who?"

"I don't know their faces. Only their mark." He shook his head. "I've spent two years searching, ever since my father died."

"Your father's death is connected to me?"

"I think so." His hand slid, just slightly, to the side of my neck. My pulse hammered against his palm. "And I think I'm about to prove it."

He leaned in.

Every nerve in my body lit up. His breath ghosted over my lips. I could feel the heat of him, the restraint trembling in his arms, the bond between us pulling taut as a bowstring...

"Lyra." Kael's voice came out strange. Hoarse. "Look at your hand."

I broke away from Dominic, dizzy, and looked down.

Where Kael had caught my elbow in the clearing, a faint silver mark was glowing on my skin. A crescent moon, delicate and fierce, with a thin line crossing through it.

Dominic went absolutely still.

"That's impossible," he breathed.

He pulled back his collar. On his left shoulder, burning pale under the skin, was the same crescent, the same line.

Then, slowly, Kael unbuttoned his shirt.

The mark gleamed over his heart, brighter than either of ours.

Nobody spoke.

Three marks, my wolf whispered, awed and shaken. One moon.

"Two mates," Dominic said at last, his voice rough. "The Moon Goddess gave you two mates."

"That hasn't happened in three hundred years," Kael murmured. He was staring at me like I was something holy and something dangerous all at once. "Not since the last white wolf."

I laughed, close to hysterical. "So the goddess thinks I'm a gift?"

"No," Dominic said grimly. "She thinks you're a weapon. And somebody out there wants to hold it."

A sound shuddered through the cave. Not a howl. A voice, clear and female and magnified by the stone.

"Lyra Vance."

Every hair on my body rose.

"Come out, little moonlight. I've waited eighteen years to see your face."

Dominic and Kael were on their feet at once, shielding me, but the boulder at the entrance was already trembling, then splitting, then sliding aside as if a giant hand had pushed it.

Torchlight flooded the cave.

A dozen figures in silver masks stood in the rain. And at the center, tall, elegant, her hood falling back as she stepped forward, was a woman with white-streaked hair and my exact eyes.

My lungs forgot how to work.

Because I had seen that face before.

In the only portrait my father kept hidden in his study. The portrait of the mother who had died the night I was born.

"Hello, darling," she said, and smiled.

"I think it's time we talked about your real father."