Chapter Eleven
His Mark Beneath the Lie
Briana
I wake to warmth.
That’s the first strange thing.
Not panic. Not the sharp snap of my body dragging me out of sleep with a knife already in my hand and a scream locked behind my lips. Not the press of remembered restraints around my wrists or phantom hooks biting into my throat.
Warmth and Breathing.
Knox.
For one suspended second, I don’t move.
My eyes open to pale morning light spilling across my bedroom floor. The curtains are still too thin, the city beyond them already awake and rude, but none of that matters because there’s a heavy arm around my waist and a massive body curved behind mine.
My back is against his chest, and my legs are tangled with his as his breath moves against my hair. And I am not afraid.
The realization hits so hard that I almost become afraid out of habit.
My body waits for the delayed panic. For the sick twist in my stomach. For the instinct to claw, kick, flee. But nothing comes. No panic. No disgust. No need to escape. Only the ache between my thighs, the tenderness at my shoulder, and the deep, impossible thrum of the bond beneath my skin.
Knox’s mark pulses gently where his teeth claimed me.
Mine.
No. I frown into the pillow. Not mine.
His voice from last night answers in my head, rough and reverent. You are yours.
My throat tightens.
The bond hums again, and this time I understand its shape better. It doesn’t feel like a chain. It doesn’t pull me down or lock me in place. It feels like a door left open between us. A dark thread, warm with smoke and rain and beast, stretching from my chest to his, and I can feel him there.
Sleeping, but not deeply. Knox doesn’t seem like a man who ever fully sleeps. Even now, his body is loose around mine, but some part of him remains watchful. Guarding.
I should resent that. Maybe later.
Right now, I let myself enjoy it, just for one selfish breath.
His arm tightens slightly around my waist. Not enough to trap, just enough to ask without words.
I place my hand over his, and the bond flares.
Knox wakes instantly, and his entire body goes still.
“Briana?” My name is rough with sleep, and it does something terrible to my insides.
“Still here,” I whisper.
His breath leaves him slowly, warm against the back of my neck. “Are you okay?”
There it is. The question I will probably hear for the rest of my life, but from him, it doesn’t make me feel fragile. It makes me feel seen.
I take inventory because that’s what survivors do. Shoulder sore. Body tender. Heart too full and too raw. Throat bare. No collar. No hands where I don’t want them.
“I’m okay,” I say, then add, because we’re apparently doing honesty now, “I think.”
His arm loosens immediately. “Do you need space?”
I close my eyes. Of course, he is ready to pull away even though every inch of him feels like it’s fine to remain near me.
“No.” My fingers tighten around his hand. “Not yet.”
He goes quiet behind me. The bond gives me the edge of what he feels, not words, not thoughts, but sensation. Relief so strong it hurts. Want, banked low but burning. Devotion, dark and enormous.
And fear, not of me but for me, and of himself.
I turn carefully in his arms, and he lets me, lifting his arm so I don’t feel pinned. When I face him, the air shifts. His hair is loose from its tie, falling dark over his forehead. Stubble shadows his jaw, and there are scratches down one shoulder from my nails.
My cheeks heat, and his eyes darken, but he doesn’t smile. Knox’s hunger is never careless. It watches me from behind all that control, waiting for permission to breathe.
“You’re staring,” I say.
“Yes.”
“No shame?”
“Not about looking at my mate.”
My stomach flips. Mate. The word doesn’t scare me the way it did last night. It probably should, and maybe it will again. But this morning, in the messy quiet after choosing him, the word feels like a hand, held out in the dark.
I touch the mark on my shoulder, and Knox’s gaze follows the movement, and the bond shudders.
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
“A little.” His jaw tightens. “Not bad,” I add. “A good hurt.”
His eyes close briefly. Interesting. I file that away for a braver version of myself.
Then my gaze drops to his shoulder, where my bite left a red, imperfect mark on his skin. It’s not magical like his. Not ancient. Not glowing with some beastly power. Just mine.
Human and messy.
Something warm unfurls in my chest. “I marked you back.”
His eyes open. “Yes.”
“And you let me.”
His voice turns rough. “You wanted to.”
The simplicity of that answer nearly undoes me.
I reach out before I can overthink it and press my fingertips to the bite I left on him. Knox inhales sharply, his muscles locking beneath my touch.
I pause. “Too much?”
A laugh breaks from him, low. “For me? Always.”
That shouldn’t make me smile, and yet it does.
My fingers trace the edge of the mark. “You’re very dramatic for someone who punches through brick walls.”
“Brick is easier.”
“Than me?” I ask softly.
“Yes.”
No hesitation, no charm, just truth.
The bond hums softly, and for a moment, I feel the shape of his want more clearly. Not just the physical hunger, though god knows, that’s there, dark and hot and enough to make my pulse trip, but the rest of it too. His need to hold. To protect. To kneel. To be trusted.
It’s too much, and I pull my hand back. Knox releases me before I have even finished moving, rolling onto his back to give me room.
The loss of his heat is immediate but so is the gratitude.
“Thank you,” I say.
His gaze fixes on the ceiling. “You don’t have to thank me for giving you space.”
“I know.” I sit up, pulling the sheet with me. “I’m doing it anyway.”
My body aches as I move, and memories of last night flicker through me in pieces.
His mouth on my shoulder. His voice telling me I didn’t need to be quiet.
My hands on his face. The bond opening. Pleasure sharp enough to turn frightening, then his voice bringing me back without stopping unless I asked.
You are here. You are safe. You are mine only because you chose me.
My cheeks burn hotter, and Knox looks at me.
I point at him. “Don’t.”
“I said nothing.”
“You thought loudly.”
His mouth almost curves. His almost-smiles are going to be the death of me.
Then I see the black velvet folded over the chair near the window. The dress, The Marrow House, and the fucking fake collar. And just like that, the warmth inside me thins.
Knox feels it through the bond. He sits up slowly, sheet falling to his waist, and I try very hard not to be distracted by the broad chest, the scars, the muscle, and the mark I left on him.
I fail. Briefly, but then the velvet wins.
“I have to wear it tonight,” I say.
“I ... know.” His voice is already different. Colder, though not toward me.
He looks at the dress as if it has personally insulted every ancestor he has ever had.
“And the collar,” I add, sending a growl rumbling through his chest.
The bond flashes with rage so fast I flinch. Knox sees it and shuts the emotion down brutally. “Sorry.”
I turn back to him. “Don’t hide it.”
“I don’t want it touching you.”
“I know.”
“I want to crush it.”
“I know.”
“I want to take you somewhere far from that place and kill anything that follows.”
My breath catches. Not because the words scare me, but because they don’t.
I crawl toward him slowly, sheet clutched against my chest. His eyes track every movement. When I reach him, I stop close enough that our knees touch beneath the blanket.
“Say the thing,” I whisper.
His face tightens. Then his hand lifts, stopping in the air between us. I nod, and he touches my shoulder, just beneath the mark, thumb careful over my skin.
“It’s fake.”
“And?”
“You aren’t theirs.”
“And?”
His eyes hold mine. “You are mine because you chose me.”
The bond warms, and I breathe through it. “And you?” I ask.
His thumb stills. “I am yours because I choose you too.”
The words settle something inside me. “Good,” I say.
He looks wrecked by that single word. I am starting to understand how much power lives inside small permissions.
A knock sounds at the door, and I nearly jump out of my skin. Knox moves faster than thought, shifting between me and the door while still somehow keeping his body angled so he doesn’t trap me against the bed.
Progress. Also, deeply annoying.
“Who is it?” he growls.
“It’s your least favorite witch,” Krishka calls. “And breakfast. Mostly breakfast.”
Ari’s voice follows. “And me.”
Knox closes his eyes. “Goddess save me.”
“No goddess wants this job,” Ari says through the door.
I laugh, and it surprises me. Knox looks back at me, and the expression on his face makes the laugh catch in my throat. He looks like he would collect that sound in his hands if he could.
I clutch the sheet tighter. “I need clothes.”
His gaze darkens and then jerks away so fast I almost laugh again.
“Yes.” So very eloquent.
I slide out of bed, taking the sheet with me like a terrible toga. “Turn around.”
He turns so quickly that it’s almost insulting.
Ari snorts from the hallway. “This is adorable.”
“I can still kill people,” Knox says.
“Not through a door, Horns.”
“Do you want to test that theory?”
“No,” Malichai says from farther away.
I pull on leggings and an oversized sweater, wincing when the fabric brushes my shoulder mark. Not from pain exactly. From awareness.
Knox feels that too, and his shoulders tighten.
I walk over and touch the center of his back. “I’m fine.”
He exhales. Then, very softly says, “I felt it.”
His back is warm beneath my palm, and I let my hand stay there for one breath.
“Then remember I can feel you too,” I say. “So maybe try not to murder the people in the hallway before breakfast.”
His head turns slightly. “No promises.”
I step back. “You can turn around.”
When he does, his eyes move to the sweater, my bare legs, the mark hidden beneath the fabric, but not from either of us. Then, to my face, and that’s why I can stand it.