The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl-Chapter 163: XV

Valka

Prying Drustan out of Kara’s arms proves impossible--that is, without hurting either of them. I watch in slow horror as the human children shriek in our terror and she sucks.

Jessamine’s sobbing to the side, yanking at Kara’s legs, telling her she’s hurting her brother. Tristan’s clapping and giggling. Asterin has the strangest, stricken expression on his face, a newly found curiosity as he notes each swallow Kara takes.

Lucien’s hand clamps on Kara’s shoulder, his grip merciless as he peers into her grey eyes and speaks a single word, stripped of emotion.

"Sleep."

And even then, she didn’t just sleep. She screeches.

The sound is animal, torn straight from her lungs as she claws for Drustan, who has gone eerily still in my arms, his small body slack with shock. Her screams rake the air until they fracture into hoarse, broken sounds. Thrashing. Then nothing.

Her body collapses. Her eyelids flutter and fall shut.

She breathes softly, peacefully, as if my son’s blood is not streaked across her mouth, still gleaming wetly on her chin.

I look down at Drustan.

His amber eyes are darkened, the sun in his eyes almost swallowed whole by that darkness. His small fingers fist in my sleeve with desperate strength. He wheezes as he begins to cry, breath hitching, tears spilling unchecked down his cheeks. His mouth trembles as he tries to explain, words tangled and wrong.

"I just said she pretty," he sobs. "I didn’t wanna hurt her. I thought... I thought her hair pretty."

My hands shake as I cup his face, wiping away the blood, checking him desperately for the puncture hidden underneath all that blood. His skin is too warm. Too flushed. "I’m sorry. Show me where it hurts, baby."

His head falls back against my chest in a gasp, and he shrieks so loudly, it splinters in my skull like a song with broken keys. "It burns, Ma! It burns!"

My breath catches as I tilt his head.

Lucien is kneeling by my side instantly, prying Drustan from my arms with unmistakable urgency. One claw slices cleanly through the back of Drustan’s shirt. Lucien’s breathing goes harsh, uneven.

"What... is... that?" Melene breathes.

The blood on Drustan’s skin is moving.

Not dripping. Spreading.

It crawls over his pulse point like spilled ink, coiling into a smooth spiral, a curved, dark shape formed too perfectly to be accident. A single dark eye sits at its centre. Its a curled half of a circle.

Drustan’s skin sizzles.

He whimpers once before Lucien slams his palm over the mark, frost blooming outward from his touch. Ice bites down hard, crackling through the air.

Drustan sighs, his body easing, brows knitting faintly as his breathing steadies. His cries fade into silence as he leans further into Lucien’s touch. His eyes slip shut.

When Lucien pulls his hand away, the symbol has darkened further burned in.

Lucien’s mouth tightens. "It’s a Yang. I assume she carries the other half."

I crawl to where Melene kneels beside Kara’s sleeping form and wrench down the girl’s collar.

There it is.

A darker replica stamped over the girl’s heart.

We weren’t even gone twenty minutes. How could this happen? "What does this mean?" I ask, feeling an abnormal kind of rage. I stare at the sleeping girl and while I do feel pity for her, all I see is Rafael, placing a mark on my family once more. And for one moment, just one fleeting second, I think something so horribly vile, I chasten myself.

She’s only four. She’s a little girl. She is not Rafael. She is Astrea’s daughter--someone’s daughter. I may feel protective over my son but only a truly vile person would even think of snuffing out a child over a childish fight.

I blink back the haze of maternal, killing instinct and peer at the mark once more. "What does it--this--mean?"

Lucien exhales in mild disbelief. "It means she’s claimed him."

No shit.

***

"It’s unbreakable, Valka," Lucien sighs, exasperation bleeding into his voice. "You know that."

My nostrils flare. "Since you seem not to understand what it means to be marked, because you’ve always been the one doing the marking, let me explain. When that person is in the room, they are all you see. All you notice. All you smell. They bleed into your sleep. Into your thoughts. You start dreaming about them every night. Dreaming about touching them. Fucking them. Or them fucking you. You start to ache for them. Hunger for them. Their moods become yours. Their happiness lifts you, their anger poisons you, their grief crushes you. And if you fight it, if you try to resist, it turns into torture. The tether tightens until it feels stronger than your own will."

Lucien’s seated at the edge of the bed, legs crossed, watching me pace shallow ruts into the floor. What enrages me is how calm he looks.

I spin on him. "Do you not realize our son is in danger? And to make it worse, this is your son and your great-granddaughter. This is incest," I shriek.

He blinks light lashes. "It’s only incest if they give in to it." A pause. "Did you know my father and mother were siblings?"

I seize a pillow and chuck it at his head. "This is our children you’re talking about, you oaf. Drustan is too young to be walking around bound to a girl who wants to kill him."

Lucien catches the pillow easily. "I did it. It was so much fun."

I snarl. "You’re not taking this seriously."

He rises. "But I am."

His hair is in a wet, messy tousle above his head. Sometimes, I miss when it was longer, easier to grab when I was furious. But the cut does make him more handsome. Younger. Fun. Mischievous. Almost harmless, if one were foolish enough to ignore the dark intelligence in his eyes. The predator in his smile.

He cups the back of my neck, tilting my head back until I’m forced to meet his gaze.

"Listen to me," he says quietly. "A bond is a bridge between two souls. Why did the gods create a mate for a man? Many like to speak on procreation. But often times than not, it is something simpler than having a warm body made to stick your dick in. A mate is first a friend, a partner to walk worlds with. Someone who hears the echo of your soul and can read the footprint of it even in the darkest night."

His thumb traces the tattoo along my neck. "Bonds aren’t always hunger and sex. It isn’t always obsession. A bond is a tether, yes, but first, it is a connection. A shared awareness. Recognition. Perhaps, Kara had forgotten what it meant to be looked at not as a terror, but a person. Sometimes, a bond is nothing more than two souls agreeing to pull each other out of the dark."

His lips quirk up in a small smile and his free hand rests against my hip softly. "Not every bond is sexual. Not every mark is a mating claim. Sometimes it’s a door left ajar. Sometimes it’s learning. Understanding." His voice lowers. "Even friendship can carry the weight of a soulmate, Valka. I’ve seen it.

"If they’re taught that early, before the bond grows stronger, before it becomes a living thing that wants to devour them both... then they can learn to control it instead of being owned by it."

I suck in my bottom lip. "I don’t know, Luke..."

He takes my hair between his fingers, rubbing at the texture. And then he lifts it to his nose and sniffs in a manner that tells me he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. "Either way," he murmurs thickly. "There is no known way to severe a bond between Lycans. There’s nothing either of us can do to break it. Sure, we can worry about it forever and let it bear down on us like we have learned to shoulder every weight and worry for them. But more often than not, how you choose to handle it always makes the outcome different, and I’ve never witnessed a situation where paranoia and anxiety helped."

"I can’t just expect me to relax."

"Evadne spoke to me earlier." I pause at that. While we’d rushed to children, Evadne and Sebastian had stayed behind with Astrea. At some point, Sebastian joined us down at the little revel hosted in our honour, but Evadne refused to leave the infirmary. I hadn’t known she found Lucien for a conversation.

"She wants to take Kara," he continues. "The Kaldrith home is far into Ebonheart that the bond between them will be out of reach. Like a wet blanket tossed over both their senses. It’ll feel like that. Dulled, but not completely gone. Still, it’ll give either of them time. Until they’re old enough to understand what this is. Until they can make their own choices. It’s a coward’s way out, but it is the only way."

The doubt doesn’t leave my heart and Lucien groans. "Have I ever told you that you have a ’worrying’ problem?"

I frown. "What does that even mean? If I don’t worry about them, who will?"

"That’s not what I mean." Like a child, he takes my wrist and begins walking us in a circle, like children playing the spin game. "You don’t know how to relax. Even when everything’s fine, you keep expecting bad things to happen. And when bad things don’t happen, you begin to worry that something is wrong with the universe."

I brush him off. "It’s not like it’s misplaced. There’s another war knocking--oh," I gasp when I land against the soft heap of silky sheets. "What are you doing?" I whisper when his lips brush over my neck sensually, his fangs scrapping down my collarbone. "The children are in the next room."

Slowly, he tugs the rope of my robe. "Then you’ll have to be very quiet."

His arm pushes under my waist and in one smooth motion, he twists us, hurling me on top of him. A startled giggle erupts from me. "You want me on top? Then you’ll have to be the quiet one. Not me."

He nods, a blush rising to his cheeks. "Hurry, before I change my mind."