Blood Marked: The Bone Moon Alphas

CHAPTER 8 Shadow Marked

After Jax marked me, the Academy stopped pretending I was invisible.

Whispers followed me down every obsidian hallway.

Did you see her pull the storm out of him?

Rhys has a mark. Jax has a mark now too. Is she collecting them?

Lira said she's still wolfless. Liar.

The Vessel...

I tried to hide the two marks — Rhys's blood-moon on my collarbone was easy to cover with my uniform collar, but Jax's little lightning bolt on my wrist crackled faintly whenever I got nervous, and it showed.

Kieran didn't speak to me for two days. That was worse than shouting.

He would walk into a room and the temperature would drop. He would look at my wrist and his jaw would clench so tight I thought his teeth would break. Shadows would pool at my feet like they wanted to touch me but were being held back by a leash.

On the second night, I couldn't take it anymore. I went to find him.

His room was in the Alpha Tower, top floor, door made of solid shadow that only opened for him. I stood in front of it like an i***t at midnight, in my too-big sweats.

"Kieran," I whispered to the door. "I know you're in there."

The door melted.

He was standing by the window, shirtless, back to me. His back was covered in black veins that moved — his curse. Shadows eating him from the inside. His fists were clenched.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, voice raw.

"You've been avoiding me."

"You marked my brothers."

"I didn't mean —"

He turned. His eyes were pure black, no white, no iris. Shadows poured out of him uncontrollably, filling the room, making the walls weep darkness.

"Do you have any idea what you did?" he snarled, stalking toward me. "Rhys hasn't had a clear day in ten years. Jax hasn't slept through a storm since he was eight. You touched them and gave them peace. And you think you can just walk away?"

"I wasn't walking away!"

He grabbed me — not gentle like Rhys, not desperate like Jax. Possessive. One hand in my hair yanking my head back, the other on my waist pinning me to the wall. His body was ice cold, even through my clothes.

"You smell like them now," he growled against my throat, inhaling. "Rain and blood. Where do I fit? What is left for shadow?"

My heart was beating so fast I thought it would burst. I should have been scared. Kieran Blackthorn was the most feared Alpha in Nocturne. He could make you disappear into shadow and never come back.

But Nyx wasn't scared. Nyx was purring.

He's starving, she whispered. Feed him.

I stopped struggling. I let my head fall back, exposing my throat. Submission — but not weak submission. Invitation.

Kieran froze, his mouth inches from my pulse.

"I'm not scared of you," I whispered.

"Liar," he breathed.

"Then make me scared."

That broke him.

He kissed me like a man who had never been taught how to kiss — hard, clumsy, teeth clashing, all cold and shadow and need. His shadows shot out and pinned my wrists above my head, not because he wanted to restrain me, but because he didn't know what to do with his hands if he wasn't holding me captive.

I bit his lower lip, just enough to make him gasp. The taste of winter and smoke filled my mouth.

The reaction was instant.

His shadows, which had been thrashing violently for days, suddenly went still — and then wrapped around us both like a blanket, soft, warm for the first time ever. The black veins on his back receded, sucked back into his skin, flowing into me.

I gasped as cold flooded my chest. It hurt, but it was a clean hurt, like ice water after burning.

Kieran tore his mouth from mine, eyes wide, now winter blue again, normal. "What did you —"

He looked down. On my collarbone, right next to Rhys's blood moon, a new mark was forming — a perfect black crescent moon made of living shadow that moved when I breathed.

His mark.

Kieran stared at it, obsessed. He touched it with a trembling thumb, and the shadow mark curled into his touch.

"Mine," he whispered, but this time it wasn't a growl. It was reverent. Broken. "You let me mark you. You let me."

"You didn't ask," I said, trying to be sassy, but my voice shook.

He leaned his forehead against mine, his whole body shaking now. The great, terrible Kieran Blackthorn, who made lights dim when he entered a room, was shaking.

"My shadows have been eating me alive since I was twelve," he confessed, voice barely there. "My father told me to control them. To feel nothing. Because feelings make them hungry. But with you — when you touched me — they were quiet. They were... happy."

He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, the corner of my mouth, like he couldn't stop.

"Don't take it back," he whispered against my skin. "Please don't take it back."

I put my hands in his black hair. "I'm not going anywhere, you possessive shadow freak."

He actually laughed. A real laugh, rusty from disuse.

Outside his window, the entire volcano sky flickered — not from a storm, but because his shadows, for the first time in eight years, let the stars show through.

On the floor below, Jax howled, having felt the bond shift through our weird new link. Rhys's voice echoed in my head through Silas's link: He marked you too?

And Silas, who had been silent for two days, finally spoke in my mind, his voice dark and hungry:

My turn.