Killian crossed the room in a few strides, and up close, whatever was happening on his face only intensified — something between disbelief and a hunger that had nothing to do with attraction, more like a man staring at a ghost he’d never expected to see standing upright and breathing.
His eyes dropped to my throat, to the mark I still hadn’t managed to fully cover, and something in his expression cracked open.
“That’s not possible,” he said quietly, more to himself than to either of us.
“I said the same thing an hour ago,” Alaric replied.
I sat there between the two of them, feeling like an object being discussed rather than a person in the room, and the old, defensive part of me wanted to demand they explain themselves properly instead of trading half-sentences over my head.
But underneath the irritation was something else, something I didn’t want to name — a small, treacherous flicker of curiosity, of *what if*, that I hated myself for feeling.
“I don’t know what you think this means,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended.
“But I’ve spent my whole life being told this mark makes me wrong. Cursed. An omen. I don’t need two strangers looking at me like I’m about to change their whole world, because I’m not. I’m nobody. I was rejected four days ago by my own mate in front of his entire pack because I couldn’t give him an heir and because of exactly this.” I gestured at my throat, my hand shaking.
“So whatever story you’re building in your head, I’d be careful getting attached to it.”
“I’m not building a story,” Killian said, his voice gone quieter, careful, like he understood he was handling something fragile.
“I felt something the second I walked in here. I don’t know how else to explain it except that it felt like recognizing someone I’d never met.”
I wanted to tell him that meant nothing, that instinct had led me wrong before, that I’d spent three years trusting a bond that had ended with a hand shoving me onto stone floor.
But the words wouldn’t come, because some quiet, terrified part of me had felt something too, the moment he walked in.
Elder Damien arrived not long after, an older man with sharp eyes that moved over me like he was cataloging every detail before he’d even said hello.
He listened to Alaric’s explanation in silence, studied the mark himself, and when he finally spoke, his voice carried weight.
“There’s a way to know for certain,” Damien said.
“If she is who we think she might be, forming a bond with this pack — joining us properly, opening herself to it — should cause the mark to respond. If she isn’t, nothing will happen at all.”
“And if nothing happens?” I asked.
“Then we’ll help you regardless. You’d be welcome to stay, whatever the outcome.”
I looked between the three of them and felt something twist hard in my chest, terror braided with a hope I didn’t know how to trust anymore.
If I said yes and the mark did nothing, I would know for certain what I already suspected — that I was nobody, that the mark was just an ugly accident of birth.
If I said no, I would never know at all.
“Okay,” I said, before I could talk myself out of it.
“I’ll do it.”
They gave me the rest of that day to rest before explaining what came next, and it was near evening when I heard raised voices in the hallway outside my room — two men talking over each other in a way that sounded more like brothers bickering than anything official.
“—could have called instead of just saying *get here now* and hanging up.”
“Would you have come any faster if I’d explained?” That was Killian, amusement threaded through it.
“I’d have brought coffee.”
The door opened, and two more men filled the doorway behind him, both going still the instant they saw me — that same unshielded recognition Killian had shown hours earlier.
“That’s her,” the taller one said quietly.
“I’m Bastian,” he said, stepping forward first.
“Sorry. I don’t usually feel like this, meeting someone.”
“Neither do I,” I admitted.
The second man hung back, arms crossed, studying me.
“Lucian,” he said.
“You don’t look like someone who just survived a rogue attack four days after being cast out of her own pack.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to look like.”
“Tougher than this, apparently.” Something almost like approval crossed his face.
Bastian pulled a chair closer without asking, dropping into it like he’d known me for years.
“So. If the test confirms it, that makes you our sister.”
“I don’t want you getting ahead of yourselves.”
“Or,” he said, entirely unbothered, “you might be the sister we’ve been told stories about since we were children. The one our father never stopped looking for.”
“Bastian.” Killian’s voice held a warning, gentle but clear.
“She’s allowed to be careful. After what she’s been through, I’d be more worried if she wasn’t.”
I hadn’t told any of them the details of what happened at Hellfang, but something in the way Killian said *after what she’s been through* made it clear he understood enough of the shape of it anyway.
“Whoever did that to you,” Lucian said, quiet and flat, “isn’t going to enjoy finding out you’re still alive.”
“I don’t want revenge. I just want somewhere I don’t have to hide what I am.”
“Then that’s what you’ll have,” Bastian said simply.
“Test or no test.”
He reached over and took my hand in both of his, easy, like he’d done it a hundred times.
“Whatever the test says, I already like you better than most people I’ve known for years.”
“You’ve known me for twenty minutes.”
“I contain multitudes,” he said, entirely serious, and the sound that came out of me actually was a laugh, small and rusty, but real.
They held the ceremony at dusk, in a courtyard I hadn’t seen before, and the moment I stepped into it and saw how many people had gathered, my whole body went rigid with a fear I recognized too well.
“You don’t have to do this,” Killian said quietly beside me.
“I said I’d do it. I’m doing it.”
Bastian and Lucian fell into step on either side of me as we crossed the courtyard, and Elder Damien stood waiting at the platform’s center, the entire Dreadmoon Pack gathered beyond him in a loose crescent, watching me with something closer to hope than judgment.
“You’ll need to open yourself to the pack bond fully,” Damien said, “and expose the mark, so everyone here can witness it.”
I pulled the collar down myself before anyone could do it for me.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd, low and immediate.
“Now,” Damien said gently.
“Open yourself to the bond. Don’t fight it.”
I didn’t know how, not really, until Killian stepped closer.
“Stop trying so hard,” he said quietly.
“Just stop, for one minute. That’s all it is.”
I closed my eyes and let some small, exhausted part of myself finally stop bracing for the next blow.
Heat curled up through my throat.
My eyes flew open.
The murmurs turned to gasps, and I looked down in time to see the mark shifting, six points blooming outward from the center, then a seventh, silver light tracing each one until an ugly birthmark had become a perfect seven-pointed star.
The courtyard went utterly silent.
Then it didn’t — voices erupting all at once, Damien’s own composure cracking as he stared at my throat.
“That’s not the crescent moon,” someone called out.
“That’s not what the records say happens.”
“I know what the records say,” Damien said, his voice unsteady.
“Maeve. Do you understand what you’re looking at?”
“No. I don’t understand any of this.”
“Neither do I,” Killian said quietly, close beside me.
“But I don’t think you’re just my—”
“Enough.”
The voice cut through the courtyard like a blade, and the celebration died as fast as it had risen.
An older woman pushed forward through the crowd, silver-haired, her eyes hard and unmoved by everything that had just happened in front of her.
“That mark is in no record I trust,” she said, loud enough for the whole courtyard to hear.
“Six generations of scholars in this pack, and not one of them ever documented a star. You want to celebrate a miracle. I want to know why a woman who walked out of Hellfang territory four days ago is suddenly wearing power like this — power convenient enough to hand a grieving family exactly what they’ve spent twenty-six years praying for.”
“Elowen—” Damien started, sharp.
“I’m not finished.” Elowen’s gaze swept over me, cold and unrelenting.
“An enemy pack wanting a way inside Dreadmoon’s bloodline wouldn’t need an army. It would only need one woman, marked convincingly enough, and a family desperate enough to stop asking questions.”
The courtyard had gone dead silent again, but this time the silence didn’t feel like awe.
It felt like the ground shifting under me all over again.