Page 71 of Moonmarked

He searched for the scars of Maera’s scratch, but my skin looked untouched, not a hint of redness left behind.

“It was about this big, four vertical lines, likethis,” I explained to Rune. “It’s all gone now.”

“Fascinating,” he said, and he planted a kiss on my wrist before he put my arm down again and wrapped his around me. The bird stayed in the air, flying from one end of the room to the other, slowly. “They took you all the way to Raja.”

“They did,” I said, the memory bringing goose bumps all over my skin that he chased away with his touch. “They even threatened her with their howls, apparently—Raja was pissed about that.” I closed my eyes, breathed deeply. “I honestly didn’t think that she’d betray me like that.”

“She didn’t,” Rune said, almost in wonder. “I asked her to cooperate with the soldiers when they came.”

Nowthatwas a shock to me.

I leaned farther back to look at his face. “Are you serious right now?”

“It was for the best. By the time you made it to Raja I knew Lyall was alive, and I knew he wasn’t going to hurt you. You would be safer traveling with his guards and coming back to the court. So, I sent them there and told Raja to make sure you went with them.”

“That’s…that’s…what the fuck, Rune?!” I sat up, suddenly feeling like I was lying on needles.

“I’m sorry, Wildcat, but it was the safest way. I couldn’t have gotten to you fast enough, not with the tunnel ruined. Trust me—if there was any way for me to get to you unnoticed before they did, I would have.Trustme.”

His hands were on my face. He’d sat up, too, and his wide eyes didn’t blink. They were as honest as the first time I’d noticed them,reallynoticed them.

All that sudden panic was already fading away.

Fucking hell,of courseI trusted him. I trusted him more than I trusted myself.

Closing my eyes, I held onto his hands and sighed. Rune touched his forehead to mine. “There was no safer way to get you to me than that, I promise you. As much as it killed me, I alone wouldn’t have been enough.”

Because of the tattoo on his neck that extended to his back, his side, his ribs. The traitor’s mark that his fuckingfatherhad put on him when he was six years old, sealing more than half his magic with it.

It was because of that that Rune didn’t think he’d be enough to keep me safe.

And if he thought it, I believed it.

“I know,” I said, absorbing every kiss he planted all over my face. “I know, Rune. I know. I just wish Raja had told me.”

“I told her to warn you.” Rune sighed. “Must have slipped her mind.”

I laughed—how could I not? Something slipping Raja’s mind? “Yes, yes. I’m sure that was exactly why she said nothing.”

Rune wrapped his hands around me and pulled me to his lap. We were both naked still and the cover fell off us, but I wasn’t cold. Not even close.

“I don’t know what happened with the werewolf alpha, Wildcat, but I’m going to try to find out,” he told me, resting his chin on my shoulder as he looked up at me with those wide puppy eyes.

“What’s there to find out? I’m fine, Rune,” I promised him.

Silence for a beat.

“She said you glowed with moon magic.”

My stomach fell all the way to my heels. “Maybe she was just seeing things,” I muttered. Though Rajaseeing thingswas just as impossible as somethingslippingher mind.

Never mind thatIhad seen that glow, too. Or at least I thought I did.

“She wasn’t. I feel it in you. It has changed you, altered your energy signature. Your very scent.” With his eyes closed, he leaned closer and sniffed my neck, right below my earlobe. “That’s why the seer couldn’t track you, even with Lyall’s blood. That’s why whatever connection I seem to have created with you suddenly stopped working.” A kiss on the side of my neck. “That’s why I thought I’d lost you, Wildcat.”

He leaned back and looked at me, and in his eyes, I saw the wound in his soul, still bleeding.

I touched his cheek, leaned closer and kissed him on the lips. “I have no idea how any of this works or what any of it means, Rune, but I wasn’t going to die without seeing your face again. I’m stubborn like that.”

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