Page 32 of Moonmarked

“Yesterday.”

“Yes.”

Again, they looked down at my body. “You’re no fae,” they whispered. “You smell like it, but you’re not fae.”

“I—wait, what?” Did he sayyou smell like fae?

“Have you shifted?”

Holy motherfucking shit.He actually said that with a straight face.

“No! Are you crazy—no, I haven’tshifted!I’mmortal,in case you missed it. I’m a human from Nerith.”

“She lies,” said the other guy on the right, and he looked me straight in the eye as he did.

“Fuck you, asshole. I’m not a liar,” I said, and maybe I shouldn’t have, but the fear and the raw tension hanging in the air, and this heat that was moving down my arms without stop now were making it impossible to keep my thoughts—and my tongue—under control.

“Maera scratched you, but you didn’t shift,” the man in the middle said. “You’re no mortal, but you’re no fae.Whatare you?”

“Iam—I’m a mortal from Nerith!” I shouted, and that was the last time I would say it.

These guys were fucking nuts—weren’t they supposed tosmellme from a mile away?! Wasn’t that what Rune said?

“Then why aren’t you dead yet? Have you been cured, taken potions?” said the man and took another step closer. Except by now I was too stunned to even move back, and the heat that was rushing inside my body kept me in place as well.

“No, no, no potions. I?—”

“You should be dead by now—four times over. How do you live?”

I shook my head, my mouth opening and closing a couple of times. “Because I’m alive. Why the hell would I be dead—I’malive!”

“Werewolf bites and scratches come with death—immediate death for creatures of Nerith,” the man said, speaking slowly now, like he was giving time for each one of his words to sink in. “Bites and scratches from werewolves who arenot alphascome with death for all creatures of Verenthia.”

Fuck.

Was it just me or were the words of those sorcerers earlier starting to make sense?

“Maera isnotan alpha,” he insisted, except I could have sworn this time he sounded different. I could have sworn this time his voice changed as he looked down at her.

The werewolf was no longer growling. She was no longer even looking at them—she was looking up atmeinstead.

“And what if you’re wrong?” I wondered, turning to the man again. “Look, mister, I have no idea how any of this stuff works around here. I’m a mortal from Nerith, and Ifound this werewolf in a cage, and I set her free. Then she saved my life but scratched me in the process— pretty sure accidentally. These are the facts. If I didn’t die, it wasn’t because of me—it was because ofher.”

The look on his face was pure shock, and his friends felt the same way.

Suddenly the one on the right pulled something from his backpack—a large knife with a curved blade almost as long as my arm.

My insides were on fire. Now that I called for it, the heat inside me responded immediately at the thought of being cut wide open with that thing.

No.

“She is a curse that has plagued us for years. As long as she lives, our pack will be divided and in chaos,” the same man said. “Shemustdie—now.”

Not going to lie, I was scared shitless, but I still moved forward, took one step, then another. Licked my dry lips again while my heartbeat shook me like a drum.

“I’m warning you—I amnotas harmless as I look. Please, just walk away,” I said, and to my surprise, my voice didn’t waver this time at all. Instead, the heat that was moving toward my hands gave me enough pressure that seemingly suffocated the fear, and my brain flashed images of those mermaids in the cavern. I’d picked them up and pulled them out of the water—by God, I would pick these men up and throw them far away from us right now.

“This is pack business,noxavira,” he said, as if he expected me to know what the hell that word meant. “We have no reason to harm you. Walk away and we will not.”

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