Page 29 of Moonmarked

That’s where I promised myself that I wasneverapproaching anyone in this fucking forest ever again, no matter how many chains they had on their bodies.

ten

“I am not a queen,”I said, more to myself, but since the werewolf was sitting there a couple feet away from me, I figured I could pretend that I was just talking to her. Just…giving voice to my thoughts, to this chaos inside my head.

“Which I’m sure you already know, but still. In case you believed that guy or something—I’m no queen.” I smiled as I plucked grass from the ground. “I’m just a mortal, actually. I’m from Earth—what you guys callNerith.I didn’t much like that name at first, to be honest. And now…” I thought about it for a second. “Yep. Still sucks.Earthis so much better. But anyway, Prince Lyall of the Seelie Court saved me when I was a little girl?—”

The werewolf’s head rose suddenly, ears perked up and eyes wide open, locked on me.

I stopped speaking, gave the silence a second, gave my heart a moment to slow down her beating again. It still caught me off guard when Wolfie moved fast like that.

“Yes, that’s right,” I finally said because she could actually understand me. I saw it in her eyes—the surprise, theshockshe felt about what I told her. “I was five yearsold. He was on an expedition on Earth, and he saw me just as a snake bit me, and he healed me. When he did, he accidentally created a life bond, apparently, linked us together. So, when he fell sick, he didn’t die. And their seer saw me, and then his uncle came to find me on Earth, told me that he needed my help. I saidyes,of course.” I closed my eyes to push back the tears trying to sneak up on me. “And I came. Almost died a bunch of times, but Rune saved me. He’s a Midnight fae, Lyall’s friend, and he saved my life, and I…”I fell for him so hard, so quickly…

Those words remained tightly locked deep inside me.

“Anyway, he took me to the prince, and I healed him. He was awake, and he was smiling, and then I walked outside his bedroom to give him some privacy with his family when…when…”

I shook my head, and the image was right there, carved on the inside of my lids. The entire scene.

“They said the prince was dead. They saidIkilled him.” I looked at the werewolf, and she was still on edge, head up, ears perked, those intelligent eyes on me. “I didn’t kill him, Wolfie. I would never…I…I didn’t kill him.”

The voices in my head mocked me. What the hell was I doing, talking to a fucking werewolf who might not even be a werewolf at all—because how come she hadn’t shifted to human yet? How come she was still a wolf?

“I don’t know,” I whispered to my own self. “There were people in that room. The queen. The uncle. The seer and two fae men.” All their faces flashed in front of me as I spoke. “I doubt it was the queen—or Helid, the uncle—but what the hell do I know, right? The seer didn’t look like she could walk well unassisted, but the men…the two men who were with her…”

My eyes closed and the scene replayed itself in my mindover and over. The prince’s body, that knife sticking out of him, the bloodshot eyes of that fae as he screamedmurderer!and pointed his finger at me.

“I don’t understand who could have done it.How?”

Wolfie moved, stood up and slowly came closer to me, sniffing as she went.

“What—do I smell or something?” I didn’t think I did, but she kept sniffing my boots, and my legs, then came all the way up to my torso. It was difficult to sit still and let her, but I did. She stopped on my arm again, on my wound, which had calmed down even more than before. She sniffed it, licked it, then sat back on her hind legs and looked at me.

Reallylooked at me, like a human being. Like a woman rather than a wolf.

Like she was suddenly surprised—or better yet,suspicious.

“What is it?” I asked, even if I’d already accepted the fact that shewasn’tgoing to talk back to me.

She growled, and I didn’t think it was a threat or a warning, but my arms broke out in bumps all the same.

I closed my eyes and sighed. “I think I want to sleep now, Wolfie. I think my brain needs a break.”

She said nothing, only watched me stand up and climb the tree I chose, where the branches were not too high and not too low, but thick enough to fit me to sit. That’s what Rune had done with me in that forest when I first crossed the Aetherway. He’d sat me on a tree to sleep, and he knew best, didn’t he?

He always knew.

Wolfie remained on the ground, sometimes walking in circles around the tree trunk, and then sitting down to look up at me, suspicious—so fucking suspicious Ifeltit in the air between us even though I was at least twenty feet up. Ididn’t let myself think, though. I just secured an arm around the branch on the left and rested my head against it, too, praying I didn’t fall while I slept.

Hoping that, when the sun climbed up in the sky again tomorrow, I’d actually find my way out of Mysthaven without any more surprises.

But it wasn’t meantto be.

eleven

The growling woke me up.

I remembered exactly where I was—asleep on the branch of a gigantic tree with dark grey, almost black leaves, while a werewolf I’d thought was a dog slept on the ground near the trunk.

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