Marked (The Coldest Fae Book 3) by Katerina Martinez (novel24 .txt) 📗

and I could smell the old blood still clinging to his hair and even his pants.

He still clung to the piece of my dress. It was ruined, now. Bloodied, soaked, ripped, but he hadn’t let it go once and I couldn’t understand why.

Shutting my eyes, I lowered my cheek against his chest. I could hear his heart pounding, now. He was hurt, but he was strong. He would make it through whatever had happened to him, but I guess I didn’t really have any doubt about that. I just wanted to be near him.

Nearer to him.

His skin was warm against my face, and that warmth transferred into me as comfort. These last few hours had been stressful, and tense. I’d barely had a moment to breathe. To think. Even when I was eating with the Alpha, tensions were high. This was a brief moment of peace and calm, and I was going to take it.

I felt his hand touch the back of my head and I perked up. He hadn’t opened his eyes, but he’d taken a deep breath. He was stirring, starting to wake. “Don’t move,” I whispered as I shuffled a little closer to his face.

He turned his head to the side and let his eyes slowly open. It took a moment for him to adjust to the light around him, but his gaze finally settled on me. “I had the strangest dream,” he said, his voice soft, low, and a bit of a struggle.

“What did you dream about?” I asked.

“I dreamt you had come to me… and you were a wolf. White, and large, and powerful… but the eyes, and the scent. It was you.”

I leaned a little closer to him and rested a hand against his cheek, brushing some of the dry blood off his face with my thumb. I smiled at him. “That was some dream.”

“No… it was no dream, was it?”

I shook my head.

“Then it’s true.” He tried to sit up, but I cupped his face with both my hands and stopped him.

“You’re injured. Don’t get up. Can you tell me what happened to you?”

“Radulf…” he groaned, “He’s getting stronger. He did this to me.”

My insides went cold. “What? How?”

“I don’t know. It’s dark magic. Somehow, he was able to manifest and attack me in the flesh. I couldn’t control him, I couldn’t hold onto him, but he had the power to cut into my body as if he was holding a knife—” he groaned again, grimacing from the pain, “Dahlia, I cannot stay here.”

“But you need to rest—”

“I can’t rest; I need to get to—”—I kissed him, pressing my lips against his like my life depended on it.

At first, he seemed a little surprised, but then he placed his hand on the back of my head again and let his lips part gently for mine. I kissed him deeply and softly, gently, with care and tenderness to begin with, but then pressing myself more closely against him.

Warm prickles shot through me like fireworks, and when his tongue touched mine, the fireworks only got louder, and larger. I could feel myself shaking, though I wasn’t sure which emotion was causing most of it. Happiness? Relief? Fear? It was a cocktail with no label, and I was getting pretty drunk on it.

When the kiss finally broke, I held my forehead against his. “You scared me,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not mean to.”

“You mean you didn’t know?”

He shook his head. “Not in a way I can properly explain, but I want to try. You need to know the truth.”

I kissed him again, a light peck, this time. “When you’re stronger.”

“No, Dahlia. Now. I have so much to tell you.”

“I do too, believe me, but we don’t have a lot of time right now and all I want to do is kiss you.”

The Prince lowered his hand to my chin, tipped it against his lips, and kissed me again. Those fireworks from before had turned to thunder inside of me; a continuous grumble of want and desire, sprinkled with a desperate need for more. I wasn’t sure how long I had, but my mind wandered to a place where he and I were absolutely alone, for as long as we wanted to be, and I could explore every inch of him with my mouth.

“I missed you,” he whispered against my mouth.

“Not as much as I did,” I said, breathless. “You left without saying goodbye.”

“I didn’t have a choice. Radulf had exposed himself and…” he shook his head. “I would have freed you from your cell myself, but I knew I would be discovered, so I entrusted Aronia with the task.”

“Wait, you sent her?”

“I did. I would have freed you myself, but Radulf had control of me, and he mentioned my father… implicated him in something terrible. I couldn’t trust anyone. I could barely trust myself… this is the only reason I was able to regain control of my own body.”

He showed me the sleeve of my dress. I looked at it, then back at him, “This is how you were able to keep control?”

“It’s you. Your scent. It keeps him buried. I can feel him screaming to get out, but now that you’re here, he can’t.”

“Then, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Dahila, these people…” he paused to look at me. “They’re dangerous.”

“They aren’t much more dangerous to me than your people were the day you kidnapped me.”

He let his eyes fall, as if the memory made him uncomfortable. When he looked at me again, I could feel his fear, his concern. I had rarely seen him like this before, so it shook me. “You don’t understand. These people are vicious predators and cannibals. They kill everyone who crosses them and eat their spoils. We can’t stay here.”

“It sounds to me like both your people are pretty prejudiced against each other. And, also, I guess you’re talking about my people now, too.” I showed him the mark on the back of my right hand. “It’s real. I