22. The Mark
CHAPTER 22
The Mark
ALIA & SHEN
Alia
“ G o on patrol, Red. Keep your hands outta trouble, Red,” I mocked under my breath. Nothing out here, from the soft sigh of wind brushing her fingers through the leaves to the piercing cry of ravens and crows, could hear me. I kept my voice down, anyway. Grandma had eyes and ears everywhere.
Grandma had always been… different. Where Mom and Dad showered their kids with all they could afford and spent time training us in the ways of battle and survival, Grandma threw you headfirst in a river and told you to swim. And with her being the Red matriarch, there wasn’t much Mom and Dad could do about it.
A sound made me pause. I froze, gently easing a blade from my thigh. A rabbit scampered out, a horn on its head gleaming. A horned rabbit. It opened its mouth and hissed. I hissed back. It paused, cocking its head as if I were the creature with serrated teeth and a killer horn that only ate veggies. Yes. The rabbit with the teeth that can rip out a throat eats no meat. My world was weird.
It scampered into the underbrush as I sheathed the blade. The back of my neck itched. I refrained from scratching, instead thinking about what I would do when not on patrol. I should be home, gathering eggs for Mom and sparring with Jacob. And with Anna home, they would need me more than ever.
But since Grandma had punished me with the Mark of Dishonor, I was supposed to stay doing inane work around the tribe for at least a week. It was a way to show off my newest mark.
When in the tribe, I couldn’t wear a bracer on that arm nor was I allowed to hide the bandage until the wound healed. Thankfully I could cover it when out on patrol. Only one mark was allowed per arm. A third mark meant death.
Grandma liked her Reds on point and well-disciplined, but if she knew what I had done... If she knew about me letting the horned rabbit and another werewolf go or about me bonding with a unicorn, I’d get a much harder rap than a mark of pain. I shook my head. It was good she didn’t know. It would be terrible for her to kill the grandchild who was supposed to take over the tribe.
Today wasn’t about killing magic. It was about discipline. Grandma’s last words rang in my ears: “Bring me his pelt in one month.” The or else was explicitly implied.
One month. And two weeks of that would be stuck meandering around the village on patrol. On the positive side, I’d be home for my family during this time. A slight smile crossed my face.
It fell when I remembered who I’d have to kill.
Shen’s best friend.
I couldn’t do it in front of Doc. It had to be while he was on a mission so I could pin it on his target.
Pain pierced my soul. I had to kill the werewolf. He’d killed my grandpa, but he was no longer an empty hood with killing intent. He was Shen’s friend. Doc’s adopted son. A person.
Something skittered across my mind, a need coming across my soul.
A form stepped out of the shadows of a tree. I blinked and blinked again, but he didn’t disappear.
“Shen?” I asked.
“Alia,” he said, his voice soft.
“What… what are you here for?”
“My Alpha has sent me for your matriarch. I have come to warn you. And bring you Fenbutt.”
The little puppy scampered from the bushes. I caught him in my arms, a warm laugh escaping me as he licked my chin and face. I grunted, sitting down on a log. "You've gotten so big, wittle one. You'll outgrow me soon," I said. He woofed as if agreeing.
“Why?” I asked Shen.
"I brought him because he keeps escaping to look for you. He's stubborn." He tickled the pup under the chin and the puppy thumped his feet.
"And why the warning?"
He ran a hand through his hair. His eyes were creased with regret, and there was a pain in the jagged lines of his face I hadn’t seen before. “Because I am tired of killing.”
“You wish me to stop you?”
He shook his head, but then paused. “I do not know. I just do not?—”
“You don’t wish to kill. I understand. You need to be free, Shen. Free of your Alpha. Free of her commands.”
Shen sat beside me, hanging his head. “I don’t know how,” he whispered. He turned and took a good look at me. “How do you know so much about people?”
I wanted to trust him. “It’s my Gift. And my Curse. I know other people’s needs .”
He nodded, looking off to the shrubbery when a twig snapped. A horned rabbit leapt from the brush a moment later and froze before scampering off. “That must be a hard burden. Do you know who I am?”
I nearly winced at the abrupt change, but went with it.“No.”
“I am darkness, Alia. And you are light, despite all you have been through.”
“Sometimes darkness is just how we look at things. Sometimes it’s the darkness which allows you to see the stars that can guide you home.” My voice was wistful, nearly longing. I snuggled Fenbutt closer, burying my nose in his fur.
“Do you need a hug?” he asked abruptly.
My chin jerked up and I stared at him.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It might be an idiotic offer… yet you do much for others. I am here, and you do not seem to mind being around me?” His voice was so hesitant, unsure. So unlike him.
He raised his arm, and I slid beneath it.
“Werewolves gather in packs not only for safety but because we need others.”
I leaned my head against his chest and listened to his heart. There was a power in his body that I knew could be used to break me. However, it was the power of his words over me that terrified me.
“There is safety in numbers, yes. But more than this, there is connection. There is family. There is freedom.”
“What about when your pack is sick?” I whispered.
He sighed. “When a werewolf’s pack is sick, he cares for them but leans on another, stronger werewolf. We all need support, even the strongest of us all.”
My shoulders quaked. My soul quavered at the understanding in his voice. “Who is there for you?”
“Doc and his mate,” he said, and I heard the smile in his voice. He leaned closer to whisper, “Who is there for you?”
I couldn’t answer for the lump gathering in the back of my throat. Mom and Dad would’ve loved to be there for me, and in many ways, they were. But with Anna sick and them caring for two toddlers at their age when they should be out traveling or enjoying their retirement, they couldn’t bear my burdens and theirs.
“Me,” I said at last.
He breathed out, his heart slowing. “I understand.” He froze, his muscles going rigid. “I smell… blood.”
I didn’t want to move, but he leaned down and his nostrils flared. His eyes took a distinctly red hue. He moved Fenbutt so the puppy lay against my chest so he could get to my arm.
Shen grabbed my wrist, and at my sharp intake of breath, he released me as if I’d burned him. A low rumble spread through his chest, and his eyes swirled with flecks of red and gold glittering in the dark abyss like embers dancing in a night sky. He gently untied my bracer. His pulse pounded in the veins at his neck. I remained still as he gently eased the bracer from my arm.
When he saw the bandage where blood had already shown through, he unleashed a growl that made me jump at the promise of death.
“Forgive me. It is just… May I?” he asked. I nodded, unsure what else to do. There was anguish on his face. He unwrapped the rolls and carefully peeled off the red-stained bandage.
When he saw the wound itself, he just… stopped. His breathing, his movement—I had never seen someone become a living statue. He closed his eyes, his breath returning in such a ragged gasp that I knew he was fighting against… something .
“Who… did this to you?” His whisper was a ragged sound torn from the depths of his chest. His eyes opened and again, he stared at the mark carved into my wrist.
The Mark of Dishonor. A shape carved into my skin and designed to resemble a spider lily, with six curling petals inside eight reaching legs. The cut encompassed my entire wrist and trailed halfway around my arm. It was red and raised and still wept blood and discharge. The blade used wasn’t serrated, so it sliced but didn’t tear the skin. A small mercy.
I numbly shook my head, reaching to hide it from him, but he gently moved my other hand away, his eyebrows furrowed. “It was just a punishment…”
His growl threaded through my bones and shook my soul. “Who? Why?”
“I–it was my fault. I–I failed.” Did Shen know his best friend was Hood? I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want him to think Fen was to blame. I had let him go of my own will, and I would take whatever punishment came because of that decision.
Shen’s eyes rose from my wrist to my face. He set a hand on my cheek, his eyes meeting mine. I sucked in a sharp breath at the death sworn by his eyes so red it seemed as if they were bleeding. “I will only ask once more, Little Red.” His voice darkened with promise. “Who. Did. This?”
“Grandma,” I said, my lips parting and mouthing her name even if it was a mere whisper.
“Tell me why I should not kill her.”
A shiver ran through his body as his forehead grew a soft, downy fur that lay against my skin.
“She’s my grandmother,” I said.
“Give me something better or else I will complete my mother’s order without issue or qualm. I will not feel bad about killing the one who hurt you.”
That shook me out of the trance his words and the pain in his eyes had put me into. “Shen, if anyone is going to kill her, it’s going to be me.”
A low rumble spread through his chest and it took a moment for me to realize he was laughing. “Only you, Little Red, could snap my wolf from a murderous rage with a death threat.”
“Murderous rage?” I squeaked.
He pulled back, and I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed when I saw his eyes merely flecked with red rather than consumed by it. “You will never understand how close I came to ripping your grandmother and every adult in your village to shreds, Little Red,” he said quietly.
I shivered in his arms, even as I buried my nose into his neck. Words wouldn’t come. No one, not even my family, had become so angry at the punishments doled out by Grandma for the ‘good of the tribe.’ But Shen… he… he…
He kissed my hair and wrapped his arms around me and Fenbutt, who had sat so silently I’d nearly forgotten he was in my arms. We sat there for a good while, just being.
And it was nice.
Shen
A sigh escaped Alia as she burrowed into my chest. I tightened my hold on her, Lycus aware but nearly ice cold in his rage. Her own grandmother was responsible for the scars along her body. The pain ran deep in this one.
“Why?” I asked.
“For the mission I didn’t complete.”
Even werewolves do not mark their progeny because of failure. My own mother does not do such things. I had been captured and tortured a few times in my life, but that was mostly by my own volition to gain access to a leader. My tormenters had died the moment I had escaped. My own mother did not torture me. No, she let others do such things and took my will, but she did not torture me.
“What mission, Little Red?” I said, attempting to keep my voice even.
“It was why I kidnapped you. To draw him out. But he didn’t come. And then I… I let him go.”
“Who?”
“Sicario Hood.”
My blood ran cold.
Alia
Something came over Shen. A need broke through. And for once in my life, I could not read the need. It was all over the place, a seething, teeming mass that stabbed into the wall around my soul.
“Shen?” I whispered, moving back to peer at his face.
The person who peered back was the emotionless visage of the one I’d first kidnapped. A cold chill ran down my back and my heart sputtered in my chest as fear wrapped icy fingers around my heart.
“Shen?” I whispered again.
“Alia, I—” His claws gently poked into my back as he partially shifted. His shoulders slumped, and he leaned his forehead into mine. “I am so sorry,” he said, his voice taut with anguish and loathing.
“For what? You didn’t do anything, Shen,” I said, trying to understand.
“I am the reason you were hurt.”
“That’s not for you to take. My grandma marked me because I failed. That’s all there is to it.”
“But why mark you? Why not do something different?”
A hollow feeling came to my chest. “In the Reds, we are bound by different rules. Grandma knows I have an aversion to killing, so she made the only pathway forward about killing. And when I went against my tribe, she made sure those above and beneath me in the Reds would know I’d failed. It isn’t my first.”
He lifted his head and stared at me with eerily dark eyes. “Show me.”
I took off my other bracer to show a mark just like the one I’d recently received, though my older one had healed into a red scar instead of a white one because of the Ambrose ink which leaks from the blade used to make the mark. It seeps into the skin and causes an odd necrosis when it heals, leaving the scar a mottled black and red. “This was because I let my grandpa die.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
Shen stared at me with horror growing in his eyes. And there was something deeper, some hint of a revelation. His eyes broke contact and he glared down at the mark on my wrists.
His face appeared older and haggard, drawn with some burden I couldn’t define. “Alia, there is something I must tell you?—”
A low pop interrupted us and Shen gagged right before a wave of scent washed over me. I scowled down at the sleeping puppy at our feet, but a low laugh bubbled up from my chest when I saw Shen plugging his nose and breathing through his mouth.
“It’s not that bad,” I teased.
He raised that scarred brow. “For you with your useless little nose, perhaps it is not so bad,” he said, tweaking said nose.
I grinned up at him, and he melted, pulling me back into his arms. “I am sorry, Little Red. None of that should have happened.”
“Are you… ok?” I asked at last. His needs were buried, but it was odd. They nearly felt numb, as if he was resisting the significant pain he was suffering.
He let out a hollow chuckle. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re not yourself.”
“You know me that well?”
I pulled back to look at him. I saw dark circles beneath his eyes, and there was a spot on his chin that was missing hair. I reached up and touched it, feeling smooth skin, as if it were freshly grown. He closed his eyes and leaned into my touch, a soft grumble sounding from his chest and making me jump. He didn’t seem to notice, and I realized it was almost a sound of contentment.
“I—” He stopped like he’d second guessed what he’d been about to say. “Someone who was under my protection is on Seventh this night.”
My heart broke at the lack of emotion in his voice. He was trying so hard not to feel. “Shen.” I tilted up his chin. “Look at me.”
He opened his eyes. In that moment, his walls fell. The emotion poured from his heart. And he felt it. Oh, how he felt it. His eyes burned with a pain that eclipsed anything physical and tore apart the very soul.
I reached up and grabbed the back of his head and guided him to lay on my shoulder, trying to hold him together with pure, physical strength.
His shoulders shuddered. He lifted a hand to press into his eyes. “I should have saved her,” his voice cracked. “I was there but could do nothing. I see it over and over again in my mind. The sword. The blood. The sigh as she crossed from this world to the next—” His shoulders shook, and I felt hot tears soak into my tunic.
My lips trembled and my heart ripped inside me. This sweet soul who had carried so much… Nothing I said could make this better. Freakin’ nothing.
But I could be here. And I could feel with him and mourn a beautiful soul who was no longer with us.
The sky rumbled as I made my way back to the village. A rabbit hurried into its burrow and a ground wren huddled in a stand of tree roots that made a slight cavern.
“I saw you,” a voice behind me whispered from the underbrush. I spun, blade outstretched. Graham’s sad blue eyes peered at me from beneath his Red hood. “Why have you betrayed us?” His voice was lowered, pain coating it. “Betrayed me?”
I quickly shook my head. “They aren’t like what you think. There are good shifters. Good mages. Good of every kind of being.”
His face grew hard. “After all we have been taught, you really believe those lies?”
“What if what we were taught were the lies?” I stepped forward. “Graham, don’t you see?”
“You speak nonsense, Alia. But for the sake of our friendship and the honor of your family, I give you this chance. Do not dally again, or I will report you.”
My fists clenched into fists. “I’m not someone to be ordered about like a damsel. I’m a free being with sound reasoning. Look beyond your fear for a moment. Look beneath the cracks of what we were taught. Can’t you see?”
His eyes softened for a moment. I thought… I thought he understood. But his next words shattered that. “I believe you think so, Alia. But you have been put under a thrall. It’s the only explanation. Can’t you see that? Do you really love a werewolf? They’re monsters!”
“Not all of them, Graham.” My voice came out pitiful as I watched him. It was odd, seeing him like this. And I saw myself in him. It was as if who I once was collided with the me I was becoming. He was stuck in a mire of avoiding the truth. I just hoped his eyes opened before it was too late.
“Get help, Alia, before you kill us all.” He spun, trudging through the underbrush with heavy steps.
My shoulders dropped as fear carved a chilling pathway down my spine, and I shivered.