Blood Marked: The Bone Moon Alphas

CHAPTER 13 Blood Truth

"Happy birthday to me," I whispered, staring at the words bleeding onto the page in my mother's handwriting.

I had forgotten. In Ashen Hollow, birthdays weren't celebrated if you were wolfless. Mama Agatha would slip me an extra piece of bread, but Gregory never let us mark the day. I had trained myself to forget.

Today was my birthday. I was twenty. The age the prophecy said the Vessel must die.

Above us, the Bone Moon pulsed. The entire Academy shook. Dust fell from the obsidian ceiling.

Kieran dropped Lira. She crumpled, sobbing. "I didn't know he was possessed! He came to my room last night and his eyes were white!"

"Silas, shield her," Kieran ordered, shadows already wrapping my waist, pulling me behind him. "She might still be useful."

Silas touched Lira's temple and she went limp, asleep. Her thoughts, for once, were quiet — just fear and I'm sorry I'm sorry.

Jax kicked the Archive doors shut and lightning sealed them. "We can't fight sixty Enforcers and a God-possessed Alpha in the courtyard. That's suicide, even for us."

Rhys was already at my side, hands on my face, checking my pulse. His blood-moon mark on my collarbone was burning. "Your heart rate is 180. Nyx is trying to shift you again. Kaia, breathe with me."

But I couldn't breathe. Through the bond, I could feel what Mama Agatha was feeling miles away in Ashen Hollow — the Bone Moon was there too. Every wolf in the territory was on their knees, howling in pain as Ossara's light forced their wolves down.

Including Mama Agatha.

"My mother wrote that there's a third way," I choked out, grabbing the bone book. "We share, not take. What does that mean?"

Lucien burst in through a back passage that shouldn't exist, bleeding from his nose, his silver veins now bright as mine. The bone-white tree sap was on his hands.

"It means your mother was smarter than all of us," he gasped. "Ossara isn't a God. He's the first Prime who refused to die. He split his soul into four curses to survive. Shadow, Storm, Mind, Blood. Every Bone Moon, he tries to pull himself back together using a Vessel girl as glue. He eats her."

"So how do we break it?"

"You don't take his power," Lucien looked at the Four. "You give yours back. Willingly. With love, not ritual. Your mother wrote — if the Four bite because they love, not because they are ordered, the bond becomes sharing, not stealing. Ossara starves."

Silence.

Four pairs of eyes looked at me.

Kieran spoke first, voice deadly calm. "You want us to bite her? Now? While a God is watching?"

"I want you to claim her," Lucien said. "Properly. Not just marks. A true Prime claiming. Four mates, one heart. It's never been done because Vessels always died before they could love their Alphas."

Jax laughed, sharp and terrified. "You want us to... in the middle of an invasion... have a claiming ceremony? Are you insane?"

"I want you to do what you've been wanting to do since you smelled her in the library," Lucien snapped. "Or Ossara will take her and you will all die at 25 with black veins and storms in your chests anyway!"

Rhys knelt in front of me, taking my hands. "Kaia, we don't have to do anything you don't want. We can run. I know a place in the Hollow where even Council can't —"

I cut him off by kissing him. Hard. In front of everyone.

He tasted like surprise and then like devotion.

I pulled back, breathing hard, eyes silver. "I don't want to run. I'm tired of running. I'm tired of being nothing, wolfless, hidden. If I'm going to die today, I'm going to die as something."

I looked at each of them — my shadow, my storm, my mind, my blood.

"Kieran Blackthorn, do you want me?"

Kieran's shadows shattered the table. He was in front of me in a second, hands cupping my face like I would break. "More than my next breath. More than being free of this curse. You are the only real thing I've ever touched."

"Jax Wilder?"

Jax was already there, crowding Kieran, his gold eyes wet. "You pulled lightning out of my chest, sunshine. You are the only place that's ever been quiet during a storm. Yes. Gods, yes."

"Silas Crowe?"

Silas touched my temple, and for once, I let him in fully. His thoughts flooded me — my silence, my peace, my love, my Prime, please. "I have been alone in a crowd my whole life," he whispered out loud. "You are the first person who never left my head because you were never too loud to stay. Yes."

"Rhys Alistair?"

Rhys kissed my marks, one by one — shadow crescent, lightning bolts, silver eye, blood moon. "You made my blood red again. You are my cure and I don't want to be cured if it means losing you. Yes."

Nyx howled inside me, triumphant. FINALLY. NOW WE DO IT RIGHT.

Lucien started crying. "Your mother... she would be so proud. She said love was the only thing that breaks a God."

The Bone Moon outside screamed through Gregory's mouth: "ENOUGH! BRING HER TO THE ALTAR!"

The Archive walls cracked. Sixty Enforcers started pounding on the sealed doors.

Kieran picked me up bridal style, shadows wrapping us. "Then we give him a show he will never forget. Take her to the tree, Lucien. The bone-white tree is the original altar. If we claim her there, where Ossara first died, we break the cycle at its root."

Jax threw his head back and howled, lightning blowing the doors off before the Enforcers could. "LET THEM COME! SHE'S OURS!"

We ran, not away from the God.

Toward him.

And for the first time in my life, I wasn't being dragged to an altar to die.

I was being carried to it to be claimed.

Lira woke up as we passed her and whispered, "Kaia? Are you really my sister?"

I looked back at the girl who had tortured me for ten years, who was now just a scared seventeen-year-old whose father had sold her too.

"No," I said, not unkindly. "But you can still choose to be better than him. Come on."

She scrambled up and ran after us, toward the God, toward the end of the world, because for once, following the wolfless girl seemed safer than following the Alpha.

Above us, the Bone Moon cracked wider, bleeding light, and Ossara's voice was no longer angry. It was scared.

"NO. YOU CANNOT. THE RITUAL MUST BE HATE! NOT LOVE!"

Nyx laughed, and my voice, layered with hers, answered the moon itself:

"Watch us."