Moon Marked

10| Mark of Mine

Aurelia

His heartbeat was steady and strong as his words brandished me in ways that nothing else ever could. The bond between us latching onto us long before this moment, the thread of our fates tying us together and forming its eternal knot all whilst I had been ridden with guilt and planning to run away. I had been so convinced that he wouldn't be my mate, but now as he held me in his arms, all the pieces were starting to click into place.

All the looks of longing, the stares of lust, and the constant need for physical contact—how had I been so blind to the obviousness of our connection?

Even still, the revelation had me breaking in half.

The years of abandonment and the constant disappointment were hard to break through—but that night when he had found me in the spring drenched at my seams, something electric had sparked between the two of us, and I had asked him then if he was mine—it had been a desperate plea, but he had refused to answer it.

In that moment, my heart had splintered with all its hope because I had taken his silence to mean that I wasn't his.

And by the moon had I been so fucking wrong.

Throughout both of our encounters, my mate had chosen to keep this secret—filling me to the brim with three years' worth of bitterness and rebellion, and if I hadn't made it to this cavern, if one of the matrons hadn't ushered me to my place and I had run away with Meena before this ceremony had even started—Meena and I would have made the worst mistakes of our lives, and I would have added another notch to the tally of punishments I had already unknowingly collected for myself.

My hand faltered against his chest as I met his gaze again. I had made a promise to myself that this would be the final claiming ceremony I would ever attend, and this time the moon had listened to exactly what I wanted.

My heart leapt at the sight of the identical mark on his chest, my lips widening into a smile that I couldn't contain. He was watching me carefully, his eyes darkening with conviction and filling with the over-indulgent need to put his hands on me. They curved around my hips until his palms settled against the arch of my ass, my heart stuttering at the possessive hold he had on me in front of all these people.

I leaned further into his arms and a low growl resonated from his chest, echoing his dominance, and forcing my wolf to preen in his presence.

How could I have been so stupid as to not see what was right in front of me this entire time?

Every feeling I'd felt because of him, every need that I needed to be fulfilled in spite of him—it was all there because of the truth of the bond we shared, and now he was here looking at me like I was the rest of his world, fulfilling every single one of my dreams and he barely even knew it.

Alpha Adriel was mine.

He had been mine since our eyes had locked onto one another when he had appeared in the clearing. He had been mine when he had caught me drenched in the spring, praying to the witches to lead me to him. He had been mine when he had seen me crying on the tree stump, and when he had tended to my injuries.

He had even been mine every time I had begged him to leave me alone.

"It looks like you're stuck with me, little moon." The words were meant to be light-hearted, but the intensity of our emotions was like standing on a tightrope we knew was seconds away from snapping.

Now that I knew I was his, and that it was my mark that he shared—he could do anything he wanted to me. And I definitely wouldn't have been able to stop him if he wanted to make a spectacle of this claiming. I would have welcomed the show he would put on to prove to all the other sanctuary women that I was not cursed. I would have let him have me against every wall and every stone on the ground, and I wondered if he knew it.