Chapter 2 The Mate Mark

Luna's heart slammed against her ribs.

Lucien's golden eyes bore into hers, glowing brighter now-feral, alive, impossibly wild. His hand still rested lightly at her throat, but the threat was no longer clear-cut. Not just violence. Something else. Something hotter. He was breathing heavier, nostrils flaring, chest rising and falling like he was trying to cage something inside him.

"You're trembling," he murmured, voice low, dangerous. "Is it fear... or the bond?"

She yanked her face away, jaw tight. "I would rather die than be claimed by a monster like you."

A twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Not quite not.

"Then you'll have to try harder," he said.

Lucien stepped back slowly, releasing her throat. Her body sagged with the sudden absence of tension-only to find his hand sliding to her waist, possessive, warning. He didn't need to hold her down. The bond had already woven its claws into her nerves.

"You feel it, don't you?" he asked, voice softer now. "That heat under your skin. It's the bond calling."

"I don't want it," she snapped.

"But it wants you." His hand drifted lower. "And I always take what's mine."

Luna's palm flew up-slap.

His head turned with the force, and the sting of it echoed in the woods.

Silence.

Then Lucien laughed-low, dark, amused. The kind of laugh that made your stomach knot.

"Fiery," he said, rubbing his jaw. "I like that."

He turned away before she could move again. "Tie her," he ordered one of his men, who had just appeared behind the trees. "And blindfold her. She rides with me."

"You can't-!" Luna hissed, struggling as two soldiers closed in.

"I can," Lucien said without turning, "because fate just handed me the daughter of the last Alpha who tried to kill me. And the moon made her mine."

She fought. She screamed. She bit and kicked.

But when the cloth slid over her eyes, and the rope tightened around her wrists, there was only one thing she could still feel:

Heat.

Not from fear. Not from shame.

From the bond. From him.

And she hated that more than anything.