His Human Mate

The Mark

Asher navigated the throng of bodies at the bonfire, the bass pulsing through his veins like a primal rhythm that mocked his self-control. The air was thick with sweat and cheap cologne, but none of it mattered. His focus was singular, his vision tunneling on the two figures ahead. Dan, his arm slung possessively around Rayla’s waist, their bodies silhouetted against the strobing lights, was a sight that sent a low growl rumbling in Asher’s chest.

His wolf was furious.

His eyes, usually calm and playful, narrowed to slits, the golden flecks within them burning like molten amber. The scent of domination—sharp and unmistakable—filled the air, signaling the shift in the room’s energy. The crowd seemed to sense it too, parting instinctively as he moved with the grace of a predator. Dan, startled, stumbled back as Asher shoved him away, his hand clamping around Rayla’s wrist with a grip that was firm but not cruel.

Rayla gasped, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and something else—something that made Asher’s blood boil even more.

The music, once deafening, faded into an eerie silence. The crowd watched in hushed awe, their eyes darting away as if avoiding the gaze of a predator. They knew him. They knew the stories, the whispers, the legend of Asher Blackwood. And they knew better than to interfere.

He pulled Rayla away, his arm a steel band around her wrist. She stumbled beside him, disoriented, her senses reeling from the suddenness of it all. The music faded further, replaced by the frantic hammering of her own heart and the deep, primal growl that still vibrated in Asher’s chest—a constant reminder of the beast he was barely holding back.

Deep in the woods, a place Asher knew like the back of his hand from his childhood, Rayla squirmed against his iron grip. Rage blinded him, drowning out her terrified screams. Only when the primal howl within him subsided, when his wolf finally retreated, did he stop.

They were miles from the party, far from the reach of Dan’s smug gaze. Asher slammed Rayla against a sturdy oak, his face inches from hers. His breath came in ragged gasps, hot and heavy against her skin. Her screams had died down, replaced by a terrified silence. Her back throbbed with a dull ache from the impact, and she knew the bruise on her wrist would be a stark reminder of this encounter.

He held her there, captive, his grip a suffocating vise.

He rested his forehead against hers, his voice a low growl. "You’re scared of me. Why? You were perfectly comfortable in his arms, weren’t you, kitten?"

Rayla inhaled sharply, the heat of his breath fanning her face. A moment ago, fear had gripped her, a chilling certainty that he might kill her, bury her deep in this forgotten corner of the woods. But now, as his breath mingled with hers, a strange calm descended. His eyes, the color of melted gold, held a captivating intensity that sent shivers down her spine. Time seemed to slow, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The pet name, "kitten," slipped from his lips, and with it, her anger and fear began to recede, replaced by a strange yearning. The memory of him leaning over her desk that morning returned with a renewed intensity.

A knot of inexplicable emotions tightened in her stomach—was it the alcohol, the intoxicating scent of him, or the unsettling power in his gaze? She didn’t know, didn’t want to know. "I’m not," she whispered, her voice trembling despite her denial.

Asher’s eyes widened in disbelief, then narrowed. He gently pressed their bodies together, his voice rough with burgeoning lust. "You’re trembling, liar." The desire to mark her, to claim her as his, was a consuming fire. He wanted the world to know she belonged to him.

The world narrowed to the space between them. Rayla, her breath catching in her throat, met his gaze. A forbidden longing, dark and exhilarating, pulsed through her. "Just shut up and kiss me," she whispered, her voice a silken thread.

Asher, stunned by her boldness, obeyed. Who could say no to such kissable lips? Their lips met, a tentative brush that ignited a wildfire within him. He tasted the edge of rebellion in her kiss, the wildness that mirrored the beast stirring deep within his soul.

He deepened the kiss, exploring her mouth with a reverence that belied the primal hunger consuming him. Rayla arched against him, a low moan escaping her lips. He lifted her, her legs finding their way around his waist, a perfect, instinctive fit.

He moved to her neck, trailing kisses along its delicate curve, each touch igniting a storm of sensations within her. A low growl rumbled in his chest, a warning of the primal forces unleashed.

His eyes, the color of molten red, narrowed. The wolf, a patient hunter, was poised to break free. He wanted to mark her, to claim her, to make her his—body, mind, and soul.

His fangs, sharp as shards of ice, emerged. He brushed them against her skin, a fleeting touch that sent a jolt of pain and pleasure through her, a potent cocktail that left her breathless. Then, darkness.

ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

Rayla groaned, the pounding in her head a relentless drumbeat. Sunlight, a cruel, insistent finger, pried open her eyelids. Every muscle screamed in protest, her stomach churning with a nauseous lurch. "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," Scarlet’s voice, laced with a distinct lack of sympathy, pierced the haze.

Rayla groaned again, burying her face in the pillow. "I feel like dying," she mumbled, the words thick with despair.

"Expected," Scarlet replied, her voice near. "You were practically inhaling those drinks last night. Looked like you were trying to drown in a bathtub full of tequila. Are you mad?"

Rayla mumbled into the pillow, "It wasn’t like that. Just… the music was good, and everyone was having fun. And the drinks were flowing."

Scarlet chuckled. "Right. Just having fun. Sure."

She handed Rayla a small bottle. "Here, chug this. It’ll ease the pain."

Rayla accepted the bottle, her hand trembling slightly. She took a hesitant sip, the liquid burning a fiery trail down her throat. It tasted awful, but she knew Scarlet was right. This hangover was a beast, and she needed all the help she could get.

"You need a bath. You stink," Scarlet declared, her voice louder than intended.

Rayla groaned for the millionth time. "I hate that shared bathroom."

Scarlet opened her mouth to say something, then clamped it shut. She opened it again, prompting Rayla to raise an eyebrow. "What is it?" she asked, wary.

Scarlet fidgeted with her fingers, a nervous energy radiating from her. "You better be careful with your neck," she said, her voice a low murmur.

Rayla’s hands shot to her neck, her fingers tracing the contours. "Why? What happened to my neck?"

Scarlet giggled nervously. "I might or might not have gotten you a tattoo."

Rayla’s eyes widened. "Scarlet! You didn’t!"

"I’m sorry, we were both drunk," Scarlet muttered. Forgetting her pounding headache, Rayla stumbled toward the mirror. "If I didn’t see it on your neck this morning, I’d swear it was a dream." Rayla leaned closer, her breath misting the cool glass, studying the intricate ink swirling beneath her skin. "You got me a wolf tattoo."

Scarlet giggled nervously, a guilty glint in her eyes. "Matchy-matchy, just like mine," she said, lifting her own hair to reveal an identical wolf tattoo peeking out from the side of her neck.

Rayla cried out, ruffling her hair as she flopped back onto the bed, face first. "Dad’s gonna kill me."

Rayla missed the sigh of relief that escaped Scarlet’s lips. To change the subject, Scarlet said, "Zack called you like a million times. Check it out. I’m gonna grab a few things from the canteen till you finish." And with that, she practically sprinted out of the room.

Nick was already waiting for her outside. "Thank God, she believed it was just a tattoo," he sighed. "What do we do now? If the Alpha knows, he’ll demand to bring her to the pack house."

"I don’t know," Scarlet sighed with frustration. "That f*****g dickhead. He said he hated her, and the next second he shoved his f*****g fangs in her. The girl has a boyfriend, for f**k’s sake. We told him to take it slowly, but no, he has to give us the f*****g hard time we’ve ever gone through."

Nick held both her hands. "Hey, calm down. I’m here for you. All we have to do now is keep her safe until that f*****g wreck finds a way to tell her, okay?"

Scarlet nodded, burying her face in his chest. "Hope everything will be okay."

Nick hugged her back, both of them oblivious to the figure lurking behind the opposite wall, their every word falling upon his ears, fueling his malicious smile wider.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *