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Chapter 8: The Ring She Left Behind
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-07-24 16:56:58
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Branded by the Alpha, Claimed by His Brother Chapter 9: What the Silver Hid
The ring had gone from cold to burning in the span of a single breath. I only realized because Lucian noticed first. His eyes dropped to my hand mid-sentence, and his whole body went still. "Seraphina." His voice sharpened. "Your hand." I looked down. The silver band around my finger had darkened, and the skin beneath it had swollen around the metal until it looked painfully tight. An ache crawled into my wrist, followed by a familiar heaviness. I'd woken with it every morning for the last three months, so often that I'd stopped questioning it. Except now it wasn't sitting quietly in the background anymore. It was getting worse by the second. "It's nothing," I said, even as my fingers curled instinctively, trying to escape the pressure. "It's just—" "Don't." Lucian caught my wrist before I could pull away. "Don't tell me it's nothing." His gaze swept over the swollen skin around the ring. "What's wrong?" "I don't know." I tried to straighten my fingers, but pain shot t
Branded by the Alpha, Claimed by His Brother Chapter 8: The Ring She Left Behind
Someone was already shouting downstairs before I’d even opened my eyes. I lay still for a moment, listening. The room was quiet, but the distant voices below carried through the walls. Cold gray light spread across the ceiling, and the sheets beside me still held Lucian's warmth. The familiar weight in my chest was gone. It took me a second to realize it. As the thought settled, the rest of me came into focus. My body ached in places I hadn't known could ache, and for once, the ache didn't feel like a warning. Then I caught sight of myself in the standing mirror across the room. The Mark of the Deceiver still burned between my brows, a reminder that one good night couldn’t erase everything that had come before. I still wasn’t a queen. I wasn’t safe. I was an exile with a branded face, waking up in the bed of the man they called the Wild Monster of the Borders. I got up, pulled on the plain wool tunic and trousers Martha had left folded on the chest, and went downstairs to fin
Branded by the Alpha, Claimed by His Brother Chapter 7: What the Fire Knows
The bath had gone cold twice before I finally let Martha talk me into getting out of it. She helped me into a deep emerald velvet gown, the fabric cool and smooth against my skin, then patiently brushed the knots from my hair—more gently than anyone had in years. She didn’t ask about Lyra. She didn’t ask about the mark either, though I caught her looking at it more than once, something unreadable behind her eyes. “He’ll be back soon,” she said, setting the bone brush down. “He said before dark.” “Does he always do what he says?” Martha considered the question like it mattered. “Lord Lucian has many faults, child. Lying isn’t one of them.” She left me by the fire with a plate of food I barely touched. Outside, the light had turned that thin gray that comes right before the sun gives up for the day. I sat curled in the window seat, watching the tree line, and told myself I wasn’t waiting for him. I was lying too. The horse came through the gates just as the last of
Branded by the Alpha, Claimed by His Brother Chapter 6: The Lady of the House
The aroma of burning wood and roasting meat pulled me from sleep. For a second my mind panicked, slipping back to the cold marble floor of Tristan's hall, waiting for the white hot iron to hit my skin again. My hand shot up to my forehead, fingers brushing the tender, swollen skin. It hurt, but it was dry. Someone had put a cooling salve over the burn while I slept. "Don't rub it." A voice rumbled from the corner of the room. I turned my head. Lucian stood near the hearth, fully dressed in dark leather trousers and a heavy wool tunic. His damp hair was pushed back off his forehead, and he held a wooden mug, steam curling up into the cold morning air. "Drink this." He walked over and handed it to me. "Bone broth. You need food in you." My hands were still shaking, but I took it. The liquid was warm and salty, and it went down easy, soothing the raw burn in my throat. "Where are we going?" I asked, looking around the small cabin. "This place was just to keep you dry for t
Branded by the Alpha, Claimed by His Brother Chapter 5: The Warmth of a Monster
The cabin smelled of wet earth, old leather, and cedar smoke. It was warm inside, almost too warm, heated by a stone fireplace that cracked and popped in the corner of the room. My head throbbed with every heartbeat, and each small movement pulled fresh pain across the blistered flesh on my forehead. I couldn't shift. I couldn't heal. I was left with nothing but the pain. Lucian carried me through the doorway without effort, as though I weighed nothing at all. He didn't drop me onto the furs stacked near the wall or leave me in a corner to fend for myself. He walked straight past all of it, toward a large iron tub near the fire, steam already curling off water someone, or something, had prepared before we arrived. "I'm going to set you down." His voice was gentle. He lowered me onto a wooden stool beside the tub. My legs buckled the moment my weight shifted onto them, but his hand caught my shoulder before I hit the floor. "I can do it," I rasped, my throat hoarse from scream
Branded by the Alpha, Claimed by His Brother Chapter Four: The Wild Monster of the Borders
I came back into consciousness the way a drowning person broke the surface for air, gasping, disoriented, convinced for one long second that I was already dead. I didn't want to move. Honestly, it would have been easier to lie there in the snow and let the cold finish what Tristan started. My forehead throbbed where the brand had been burned into my skin, the wound still radiating heat. Every heartbeat sent another pulse of pain down the bridge of my nose and left the taste of blood thick on my tongue. Tristan's magic wrapped around my soul like iron bars, smothering my wolf until I couldn't hear even the faintest trace of her. There was nothing left inside me to fight back. In the borderlands, that was a death sentence. I tried to push myself up onto my elbows and made it exactly three inches before my arms gave out and I collapsed back into the mud, the taste of rot and iron filling my mouth again. Somewhere above me the wind moved through bare branches. Snap. A branch cr
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