Marked By Him

Chapter 3

I sit bolt upright on a… on a bed?

Panting and sweating, with my shirt clinging to my hot damp skin, my eyes dart around the room – my room. Good, good, I’m in my room. I let out a sigh, relieved, and run my shaking hands down my face, breathing in and out to calm my thumping heart.

It was a dream.

I lay back down with my head on my pillow and stare at my glow-in-the-dark ceiling – not that it’s glowing now since it’s the morning. Or is it the afternoon? Whoa, how much did I drink last night?

I roll over onto my side and look at the alarm clock on the nightstand: 07:33 a.m. Okay, so it’s morning. At least I know that. But what about what happened last night? And that dream? It felt so… real.

“Rue! Breakfast!” Killian calls from downstairs.

I bury my head in the pillow and groan into it.

“Rue!”

“Be down in a minute!”

I take my phone out from under my pillow to look for new messages, but my phone’s battery is dead. I sigh and put my phone on charge. I roll out of bed and shuffle to the bathroom. I wash my face and brush my teeth. And as I do so, something in the bathroom mirror catches my eye, and my breath catches in my throat, eyes going wide like saucers. Right there, on my neck, is a… Is that a… bite mark?

Hesitantly, I trace the bite mark with the tip of my fingers and wince. It’s furiously red, sensitive to the touch—almost like I’ve had it on me for a few hours now. But why hadn’t I felt it when I’d woken up?

Okay, okay, so I have a bite mark on my neck. That’s totally normal, right? Right. It doesn’t mean that what I dreamt about really happened. It was a dream. A completely weird dream. There must be some logical explanation for why and how I have a bite mark on my neck. I mean, I probably did some weird s**t last night that I can’t remember. Weird s**t is bound to happen when alcohol is involved. f**k.

I inspect my arms and hands, looking for bruises or scratches, but I see nothing. Even my clothes, and face, are not covered in mud. It must’ve all been a dream, then. But what about the bite mark?

“Rue, get down here!”

I spit the toothpaste out and shout, “Coming!”

I dash to my bedroom to grab a scarf to cover up my neck and head downstairs. In the kitchen, Killian’s at the stove, the sizzle of bacon a welcome melodious tune to my ears. On the kitchen table sits my plate: sunny-side-up eggs (just like I like them), bacon, sausages, and a few slices of toasted bread.

Killian looks behind his shoulder at me for a brief second before turning back to his bacon. “I thought I would have to go upstairs to drag you out of bed.”

“I was already awake,” I say, sitting down and digging into my breakfast like a vampire that hasn’t had blood in days.

Killian seems amused by this as he sits down to eat his breakfast. “Must be really hungry, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say with a mouthful of eggs.

Killian’s face scrunches up, disgusted. “Chew your food first.”

I swallow, then— “Sorry.”

Killian shakes his head and then scrolls through his phone to read an article. It’s what he does every morning now, ever since the disappearances.

“Any news?”

Killian looks up from his phone, eyebrows furrowed. I nod towards the phone in his hand. “Oh,” he says. He looks down at his phone and says, “There are new reports of missing people.”

“Again?”

He nods. “It seems like a pattern.”

Lately, in recent months, humans have been disappearing. The police have no idea what’s the cause, and if they do, they are not disclosing the information to the public. Most theories are that the cause of the human disappearances is the witches, taking humans for sacrificial ceremonies. Others theorize that it could be the vampires taking humans to the blood farms to become their blood slaves.

Killian tries to hide it, but I know he’s been looking into the case. I know this because I’ve been inside his room, which he’s forbidden me from. I’ve seen the newspaper clippings of mysterious deaths, missing humans, and werewolf-caused human deaths—even those caused by vampires—plastered on his bedroom wall. For weeks, ever since finding the newspaper clippings in his room, I have been wondering why he is interested in the case because he is not even studying law, or anything related to law, for that matter. He is a Linguistics major.

Deciding to test my brother—probably for the hundredth time now—I say, “I wonder what’s causing all these disappearances.”

I watch as Killian opens his mouth, thinks, and then clamps it shut, deciding not to say whatever it is he was about to say. He settles on: “No idea.” And then he busies himself with his phone, not looking at me. I can’t shake off the feeling that he’s hiding something from me. Something big.

“Rue?” I must have spaced out because Killian is no longer on his phone; instead, he looks at me, specifically at my clothes. “You’re still in your clothes from last night,” he says.

“Oh,” that’s all I say. I pour myself a glass of orange juice and gulp it down in one go while Killian is looking at me like he’s lost in thought. I pour myself another drink.

“And why are you wearing a scarf? It’s a hot morning,” he says.

A shrug. “Just felt like it.”

He eyes me suspiciously, and then— “Who was that guy that dropped you off last night?”

I choke on the juice. Coughing, voice strained, I manage to ask, “W-what?”

“Last night, this all-muscled guy dropped you off.” Muscled guy? No, it can’t be who I think it is. There are a lot of muscled guys. “I must say, he seemed a lot older than you.”

“How old?” I ask and then shove bacon into my mouth.

Killian gives me this look that is between concerned and confused. “You do remember him, right?”

The question catches me off guard. Mouth slightly parted, I blink at him, taking too long to answer.

Killian is up in a blink of an eye, chair toppling over. He says, “I swear to God, if that dude did something to my baby sister, I will kill him,” and then he marches out of the kitchen and down the hallway. I hear the front door open and close with a bang. I jump in my seat.

Shit.

I’m out of the kitchen in a second, running down the hallway and out the front door.

“Where are you going?” I ask when I see him climbing into his pickup truck.

“I’m going to find that guy and beat him to a pulp.”

“What? No, wait, no!” But Killian doesn’t wait. I hear the engine running. f**k. Killian is going to get himself killed if I don’t stop him. “I remember him! Killian, I remember him!”

The engine stops. Killian is out of the car, staring at me, clearly not convinced. “What does he look like?”

Okay, so if the guy that dropped me off last night is really who I think it is, then that would mean my dream wasn’t a dream after all. Crap. That would mean that a werewolf marked me.

“Well, I’m waiting.” Killian, arms crossed and eyebrow raised, looks at me expectantly.

I don’t really remember much about Mr. Big Wolf because I was too busy running for my life to take in every detail of his appearance. But I can at least try to conjure up some memory of his face, of what he looks like.

Trying to keep the uncertainty out of my voice, I say, “He has—” I stop. Killian’s hatred for werewolves has led to him knowing everything there is to know about werewolves, so how did Mr. Big Wolf slip past him? Strange. “He has, uh, amber eyes?” Killian raises his eyebrow at me. “And he has black hair, long black hair and, uh—” s**t, what else? “—he’s really muscled, as you said, and, oh, he has a small scar on his left eyebrow.”

Well, that wasn’t much, but at least it seems to do the trick because Killian sighs and says, “Fine.”

Trying not to sound too relieved, I say, “Good. Now, let’s go back inside.”

“I’m sorry if I overreacted.” I don’t tell him that he’s always overreacting. Ever since Ma and Pa died, he’s been overly overprotective. “I just… I was worried he might’ve taken advantage of you, that he might’ve hurt you.”

“It’s okay.” I smile at him, and he nods, smiling back.

I’m about to open the front door when, suddenly, someone screams, “R!”

I whip around and come face-to-face with Em and Maya, who looks like she’s about to throw up, face all-pale looking. Looking behind them, I don’t see Maya’s car on the street. Did Em run them here using her vampire speed? It would explain why Maya looks only seconds away from throwing up.

Em cups my face in her cold-ass hands. “Are you okay?” she asks, forehead creased in worry.

I chuckle nervously and ask, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Last night… last night, Em heard you screaming. She went looking for you, but y-you were gone. We thought… something happened to you,” Maya says, breathless. “We’ve been searching the woods for you all night.” And as she says that, I notice that their shoes are caked in mud, and even their clothes are covered in mud too.

Instantly, my eyes land on Killian, trying to gauge his reaction. He’s looking back at me, disappointed. Hurt? “You lied to me,” Killian says matter-of-factly.

I prise Em’s hands off my face and turn my whole body to face Killian. “Killian, I didn’t—”

“Did the guy from last night do something to you? What did he do to you?” Killian’s hands are clenched into fists at his sides and his jaw’s clenched too.

“He didn’t do anything to me.”

“I heard an alpha’s growl, and then I heard you scream for help.” Em is staring at me. I love Em, I really do, but I really want to kill her right now. “R, I smelt your fear. You were so scared. You reek of a werewolf. What happened, R?” Her voice is so gentle, like she’s talking to a child. I’m not a child, I want to tell her.

I feel cornered. They are crowding me. I take a step back. “Nothing. Nothing happened,” I say, and I am aware that I sound defensive.

“Rue,” Killian says, “what happened?”

Knowing them, they won’t let this go. Not unless I tell them what happened. Which I really did not want to do. With a sigh, I unwrap the scarf from around my neck and tilt my head to the side, baring my neck to show them the bite mark. “This is what happened?”

For a second, it’s silent, just them staring at my neck, wide-eyed. And then, all of them gasp at the same time.

They know what the mark is. And they know what the mark means.

“Is that…?” Killian’s eyes are wide, and that’s fear I see in them. I know that fear. I understand that fear.

Maya snaps out of her shock, hurries to open the front door, and pushes us all inside, face still pale-looking—even more so now than when she first arrived here.

“I’m calling Melissa,” Killian says, pulling out his phone. “She’ll know what to do.”

I am so screwed.