All Chapters of Marked By The Four: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Evelynn POVThe packhouse loomed like a ghost in the half-light - half-ruin, half-memory. Its stone walls were blackened but unbroken, defiant even in death of . Smoke curled through shattered windows like restless spirits, and every step closer felt like walking into my own grave."This place remembers you", my wolf murmured, her voice a tremor inside me. "It remembers what you were."“I know,” I whispered, though the words burned my throat. “But I’m not her anymore.”The front doors groaned when I pushed them open. Inside, the air was thick - a mix of ash, damp soot, and something older. Regret, maybe. The scent of burned oak and blood hit me in waves, stirring fragments of the past I didn’t want. A flash of laughter. The echo of footsteps on marble floors. A younger version of me, standing proud beside a man I once thought I loved."Don’t go there", my wolf warned, low and sharp.“I’m not.” I lied.I stepped forward, boots crunching over shards of glass and debris. The foyer was

Rafe POVThe world went white.For a heartbeat, I thought the packhouse was collapsing. The air shimmered, symbols of molten gold twisting through the smoke, and the scent - gods, the scent - was pure magic. Wrong, burning, electric. I raised an arm to shield my eyes and pushed through the doorway.“Evelynn!”She stood frozen in the middle of the room, her hands clenched around a blackened book that glowed like it wanted to eat the world. Across from her Varrick stood.My wolf surged in my chest, growling low. “That’s him. The rot. The one who broke her.”I felt it too - the rage, the bone-deep urge to tear him apart. But before I could move, Varrick lifted his head. His eyes burned wild, blood crusted on his jaw, and he was smiling.“She’s coming,” he whispered.The glow intensified. I barely had time to process before I felt the change. The air went colder. Heavy. And then a shadow flickered behind me.My wolf snarled, “Move!”I spun just as the light collapsed inward. Something s

Calder’s POVEvelynn was weightless in my arms.Not because she was small. She wasn’t. She was strength wrapped in skin, fire wearing flesh. But right now… now she felt like a dying ember I was terrified to breathe on.Her head lolled against my shoulder, silver streaks of magic still flickering faintly beneath her skin.“Upstairs,” I growled to the others. “First room that’s intact.”Maddox nodded, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth. Jaxon kept scanning the halls, adrenaline shaking through him. Rafe hovered beside me like a shadow ready to rip open the world if I dropped her.The packhouse was a skeleton around us. Walls charred, floors cracked, air thick with smoke and dust. But I kept moving, boots crunching over debris.“Calder,” Rafe said low, voice tight. “Her pulse?”“Still there.”Barely.My wolf pressed hard against the inside of my chest.“She’s fading. Move faster.”I swallowed a curse, adjusted my grip, and pushed up the stairs two at a time. Stone held under my fee

Aldric answered before any of us could push it: “Gone. She claimed what she wanted and left the place - left us - burned and she laughed on the way out.” He rocked on his heels. “I told Varrick she would do what he wanted. I told him she would make us right. I-” He pressed a hand to his temple as if to stop the sound within. “I thought the ends would justify it. I thought I could pull him back to ash and then raise her up. I thought I could be at her side.”“You thought you could trade lives for a crown,” I said, voice a blade. The Alpha compulsion was letting him confess, raw and defective. It exposed him, but it didn’t excuse him.Aldric nodded like a condemned man. “Yes. I wanted her. I wanted this pack to be hers because she was the only thing pure about it. And Varrick… he was softening. He laughed with the wrong men. He slept with the wrong women. I thought… if he fell, she would return to claim what was hers. I thought I could protect her better than him.”Silence pressed in -

Calder’s POVBy the time I hit the door, my wolf had already shoved halfway through my skin. Claws cracked from my fingertips. My spine tried to lengthen. My teeth ached with the need to tear something apart.Something was wrong. Bad wrong.“Open it,” my wolf snarled inside me, pacing, frantic. “Now, Calder. Now.”I didn’t bother with the handle. I shoved the door so hard it slammed into the wall.The smell punched us in the face.Blood.Not the metallic tang of battle. Not a clean wound or a wolf bite.This was soft, raw, living blood. The kind that should never be spilled.Rafe shot past me in a blur, and the noise that ripped out of him didn’t belong to a man. It was hollowed-out grief shaped into sound.Jaxon froze in the doorway, fingers curling like he needed to catch himself on something that wasn’t there.Maddox stumbled, one hand bracing on the wall. His breath hitched like someone sucker-punched him.And Evelynn… Gods.She was trembling on the bed, curled in on herself, one