Page 172 of Shifting Hearts 1
On a scroll. In the dark court. Inked in blood, years ago.
I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat. “No.”
Brannon looked up sharply. “What?”
I shook my head. “No, no, no—this isn’t fate. This isn’t a mate bond. It’s worse.”
His jaw clenched. “What are you talking about?”
My voice trembled. “You’re my mark.”
“What?”
“I made an oath,” I rasped. “Years ago, when I was just a girl. They took me into the marrow vaults, made me drink from the bone cup. I don’t remember his face, but he asked for a name. I gave one. One that echoed in my head like a curse.”
Brannon’s voice was like gravel. “What name?”
“Grey.”
The silence between us went sharp as broken glass.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I didn’t know. I swear it. I didn’t know it meant you.”
His breath came in shallow bursts. “You gave my name to the Bone Court?”
“I thought it was a dream. I thought it was just… a test. Something to prove that I was loyal.”
“A death oath,” he spat. “You gave me a fucking death oath?”
Tears prickled behind my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. I couldn’t. “You were nothing to me then. A whisper. A phantom in the Wyrd. I didn’t even know if you were real.”
His voice dropped, venom-slick. “I am very fucking real.”
“I didn’t know!”
He turned from me then, shoulders heaving. Rage rolled off him in waves. Magic, too—twisting the air, tugging at the tether between us.
I felt it in my sternum. A tightness. A pull. A plea.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I said, quieter now. “Any of it.”
He turned towards me, and the look he gave me was not fury—but grief. Pure, unadulterated grief.
“Neither did I.”
I wanted to run to him. I wanted to scream. I wanted to unmake the vow with blood and ash and scream to the Wyrd to choose again, but all I did was watch him go. And as he turned and walked away; one hand still curled around his scorched palm, cradling it. The tooth lay between us, smoking faintly, and as it slipped from my palm like a hot coal, I saw the way his gaze tracked it—a predator’s eyes, locked on prey.
“Don’t come any closer,” I warned, my voice trembling in that humiliating way I hadn’t managed to beat out of myself yet. I hated it. The weakness. The tremor. But how could I be still when fate itself was stitching us together with invisible thread?
“I don’t want it,” he growled, as if trying to prove something to himself — to me — only his eyes said otherwise. They lingered on the fang as if it were calling to him. “I don’t want you.”
And there it was. The rejection.
He said it like a weapon—one he knew would cut bone-deep.
Something inside me cracked wide open. Not heartbreak. Not pain. Something older. More dangerous. Something that had been waiting under my skin like a splinter.
“You think I want this?” I snapped. “You think I chose to be dragged into this tangle of eyes magic? You think I wanted to dream of your death for a year straight, only to find you alive and snarling like a damned beast on my doorstep?”
