My Mate Bet Me Away, So the Lycan King Collected novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Forgery

Orla's POV

I woke alone, with the sheet cold beside me.

My shoulder was bare, and smooth, and tingling.

I sat up and looked at it in the mirror across the room.

Eight years of mark were gone.

There was only skin, pink and new, and a faint warm hum where Lucan's hand had been.

I did not cry.

I got dressed, which took a long time, because my hands kept stopping.

Then I went downstairs.

He was standing in the great hall with Tobias, in yesterday's coat, and he had a leather ledger in his hand.

When he saw me, he went white.

"Orla."

"My mark is gone," I said.

"I know."

"What did you do to it?"

"Nothing." He crossed the floor and stopped an arm's length from me, and kept his hands where I could see them. "I need to show you something. It will be hard to read."

"Show me."

He held out the ledger.

I took it.

I read the page he opened to, standing in the middle of the hall with the morning light coming across the stones.

I read the word *blood rite*.

I read *Her wolf asleep and not consulted.*

I read *If the girl ever stands in the presence of her true mate, the false mark will lift.*

The words did not make sense.

I read them again, and then they did, all at once.

I lifted my head.

"False," I said.

"Yes."

"The mark was false."

"It was a forgery. The healer burned it into you with Brock's blood when you were eighteen." He said it carefully, in a level voice. "You were never bonded to him."

"Eight years."

"Orla."

"Eight years I thought something was wrong with me." My voice went up. "I thought my wolf was broken. I thought I couldn't feel him because I was cold, or stupid, or ugly."

"You're not."

"I cried at the ceremony. I cried because he called me plain at a microphone and I thought, it must be love, he's my mate, it must be me."

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