Derrick puts him out of his misery, and takes a guess at what it could be. “We’re all clearly acting like we have feelings for her, and at some point she’s going to wake up and you’re worried about how we’ll all act if she decides to choose one of us?”
“Not exactly. Remember back when people were still getting mate marks? How it was supposed to be the Fates gifting us the knowledge of who our soul’s match is? I remember overhearing my parents once reminiscing about what it was like when they first found each other...
“From the first moment I saw her, the only thing I've called her in my mind is mate. And I swear my devotion for her is exactly how my parents described it. But the part that’s fucking with my mind, is you’re all showing the exact same traits.”
“That, and none of us have a mate mark,” Derrick says as he holds up his left forearm. We all glance down at our arms at the same time. At the mention, my arm starts to itch and I swear for a split second I see something on my skin, but I blink and it’s gone. I glare at my beer to check the alcohol percentage, I swear this is my first one.
See, I knew she was bad news for us. “The idea that she could wake up and leave us, then find someone else to be with, makes me burn with rage. But the idea of her being with one of you guys... at first, I hated it, but now it just feels right that she belongs to all of us,” Marcus finally finishes the last of his thoughts on the subject.
“This seems like a moot topic when she isn’t even awake. While we may all want to pursue her, she could bat for the other team and turn us all down. I do agree though, she feels like an ours, not a mine.” I admit to everyone in the room. My hands are cupped around her arches, and I give a bit of a squeeze while staring at her face.
“Yeah, but I really hope she chooses us,” Marcus mumbles as he reaches down to play with her hair, while Alex is cupping her cheek. Derrick turns around to gaze at her too and nods his head in agreement as he reaches for her hand. The moment he makes contact with her, it’s like the air in the room has been sucked out.
There’s an absence of sound around us. I mean it was quiet before, but a distinct deathly silence now fills the air. You never fully realize how natural the sounds of breathing and subtle movements are until they unexpectedly vanish. The whole experience puts me on edge.
A moment after the silence hits, a booming vibration echoes through the air emitting from Princess, and my limbs are locked in place. It reminds me of the feeling Alex described when they were being attacked.
The air feels pressurized, and my ears pop. The hold keeping my limbs locked in place seems to release. Until now, I didn’t realize I had stopped breathing. My reflexes cause me to take in a gasping breath at the same time as everyone else in the room... including Princess.
We were already staring at her, but now our jaws are dropped in shock. Her eyes pop open and go wide as she takes in Alex holding her. Then, she glances over at Derrick on her other side and her eyes dart to mine at her feet.
Marcus gets off of the arm of the couch, kneels next to Derrick, and leans over her. There’s a worshiping expression on his face, like he can’t wait for her gaze to land on him. The moment her eyes land on him she opens her mouth, but what comes out isn’t what I would’ve expected. She starts screaming bloody murder.
She scrambles to sit up and Marcus reaches out to help her but she flinches back, and he pauses with rejection shining from his eyes. Taking advantage of his momentary hesitation, she scoots back toward me and her arms go up with both palms facing him. She shakes her hands out and does it again. I’m not sure what she expects to happen... but when nothing occurs, she whimpers.
Derrick glances from her to Marcus and back. She must catch the movement because she launches herself at Derrick. He barely raises his arms in time to catch her with one, and braces himself from falling back with the other. Everyone can hear her whisper into his ear, “Keep him away! Please don’t let him touch me!” She breaks down in sobs, burying her face into Derrick’s neck.
He wraps his arms around her and peers at each one of us with wide shocked eyes like he doesn’t know what he should do. My gaze lands on Marcus. Clearly, he’s the one who she was talking about seeing as how she started screaming when she saw him. He looks devastated, like she ripped his heart from his chest and stomped on it.
He shifts to his wolf form, shredding his clothes, and then runs from the room, leaving us all behind in shock. Our Princess has woken up. We all thought she was a stranger to us, but I get this nagging feeling Marcus isn’t a stranger to her.
Epilogue
Marcus
I’m shoved into a dingy bathroom and before I can turn around to see who’s being so forceful with me, the door is slammed shut and locked from the other side. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I walk toward the shower to turn the water on.
My features are rough, not to mention my hair’s a greasy mess hanging in clumps around my ears. Which is strange, because I keep my hair buzzed. The scraggly mess making up my beard seems like it’s been growing for a few weeks. There are streaks of dirt all over my skin like I've been crawling through the mud and wasn’t able to brush it all off once it dried and became flakey.
I take off my clothes, which are outdated and threadbare. Being gentle with them, I bring them into the shower with me and begin to rub them with a bar of soap. Goosebumps spread across my skin due to the cold water splashing onto me as I rinse the soap out of the clothes and ring out the excess water.
Before washing myself, I lay the clothes out on the sink so they can start to dry. I’m not sure what the purpose was of washing the clothes if I’m just going to lay them on this sink which looks like it’s never been cleaned. The shower has the same scummy coating too, making me shiver with the thought of my bare feet touching the slime.
I climb back in and use the same bar of soap to wash the dirt, sweat, and Fates know what else, off my body. It’s shocking that I can watch the dirt swirling in the water at the bottom of the shower with how grimy it already is.
As I’m washing, I notice my arms are covered with cuts, which is odd because I rapidly heal. The cuts are in various stages of healing, one appearing as recent as just a few hours old. I sigh while attempting to clean the grime out of the cuts but several have healed too much for me to get them fully washed out.
My left arm lifts up in front of me and I run my fingertips over my forearm. As I’m staring at it, a mark suddenly appears. There’s a hexagon and where the top line would be, it’s instead made up of a line of Queen’s Thistle that drapes slightly onto the lines connected to it. There’s also an image in the center, but before I can make out what it is, my arm is suddenly too close to my face to focus fully.
My lips place a soft kiss against the mark, lingering there for a moment before I close my eyes. “I’ll never stop being sorry, Cecily. One day, I hope you learn the truth of what happened. I love you, my darling.”
When my eyes open again, the mark is gone. My chest feels tight and I rub at it, hoping to lessen the sensation. With the water being so frigid, I step out of the flow, not wanting to linger. The cold doesn’t help my cramping muscles. Before I get out of the shower completely, I cup my hands together to try and catch some water in my palms. Bringing my hands up to my mouth, I try to drink as much as my cramping stomach can handle. I can’t remember the last time I was given water.
Drinking until I’ve had my fill, I turn the water off and step out of the shower. There’s no towel waiting for me, there never is. I use my hands to brush off as much of the beaded moisture from my body as I can. That way it can air dry just a bit faster. I make my way to the sink where my clothes are. Gingerly, I pick them up and move them over to the shower rod and hang them to continue air drying.
Making my way to the sink again, I pick up the pair of clippers I was given. Turning them on, I run it over my head. The buzz from the clippers vibrates through my skull. The tickle from the hair I've clipped runs down my back as it falls to the ground. Once my head is shaved, I move on to my beard, trimming it as close as possible.
Rubbing my hand over the stubble left on my cheek, I inspect myself in the mirror once more. Not much, if anything, has changed since the last time I was allowed to clean up. I’m still ghostly pale, my eyes are sunken into my skull. My skin is paper-thin and appears over stretched on my face. My muscle structure isn’t what it used to be, not like it was when I could properly work out.
