Chapter 22: The Mark

Court guards took my sister by both arms.

She screamed. She screamed that I had ruined her, that Father had promised, that she was the one who deserved it.

Nobody in the hall answered her.

My father followed the guards out with his hands hanging empty at his sides. He did not look at me.

Agnes knelt in the snow beside Corbin and cut his sleeve open.

"Silver in the muscle, clean in and out," she said. "Hold still, boy. You'll live."

Corbin laughed, white and shaking. "That's more than I expected."

He looked up at me.

"I owed you one," he said.

"You owed me more than that," I said. "You've paid some of it."

He nodded.

Alaric put the iron crown on his own head in front of the Court, with the Speaker's hand over it, and the benches stood and knelt.

I stood beside him in the frost and let them kneel.

Then he took my hand, and we left.

We reached Rooke Hall at noon, in the pale sun, and the house was quiet.

He shut the bedroom door behind us.

I stood in front of the window.

He stood against the door and did not come any closer.

"You said not yet," I said. "Now, you can't say it."

"Wynne."

"Come here."

He crossed the room in three steps. He took my face in both hands and kissed me, deep and slow.

I tasted salt and cold air and him.

I pulled his jacket off his shoulders. He pulled my sweater over my head. Buttons, zippers, belts, boots.

We stopped keeping count.

He laid me back on the bed, bare, in the light from the window, and looked at me for a long moment.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rejected by My Mate, Claimed by the Alpha King from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.