Page 103 of Wild Thorns

"He's here."

"What?"

"Marcus. He's been tracking you." Callum's head snapped toward the door, nostrils flaring. His eyes flashed gold, and this time I knew it wasn't a trick of the light. "Get behind me. Now."

But I'd already seen him.

In the mirror's reflection, emerging from the stall where he must have been waiting. Dark hair, square chin, those familiar brown eyes that had once seemed warm and were now flat and predatory. His cheeks were hollowed, his movements quicker, sharper. He looked like a man who'd been hungry for a long time. Hungry for something he thought belonged to him.

Marcus.

My heart stopped. The bathroom tilted. Every nerve screamed—run, run, run—and this time I listened. I grabbed my phone from the counter and hurled it at his face. It caught him on the cheekbone, and he flinched—just a flicker, just enough for me to lunge toward the door—

"Serena." Marcus's voice was soft. Almost tender. The same voice he'd used after the worst nights, when he'd hold me and apologize and promise it would never happen again. "I've missed you."

Callum moved between us, a wall of muscle and barely contained violence. The growl that came from his throat was nothing human, a sound of pure predatory threat.

"You're a dead man," Callum said. "You don't know what you're dealing with."

Marcus smiled. It was the smile I remembered from our first date, charming and warm, except now I could see what lived beneath it. Something cold. Something that had never been human at all.

"Oh, I know exactly what I'm dealing with." He raised his hand, and the air changed.

I felt it before I saw it. A pressure, a wrongness, like the moment before lightning strikes. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead. The temperature dropped ten degrees in a heartbeat. And Marcus's eyes... Marcus's eyes were glowing. Not gold like the brothers. A sickly gray-green, the color of stagnant water, of rot, of things that grew in darkness.

He spoke words I couldn't understand. They weren't English, weren't any language I recognized. They sounded old, corrupted, wrong in a way that made my teeth ache and my stomach turn.

Sigils appeared in the air around Callum, burning lines of that same gray-green light. They wrapped around him like chains, sinking into his skin. Callum roared, the sound shaking the mirrors, and I saw his body start to shift, muscles rippling, bones cracking, the transformation beginning.

But the sigils held him. Bound him. His half-formed claws scraped against the tile floor as he fought to reach Marcus, every muscle straining against invisible restraints.

"Fascinating creatures, werewolves," Marcus said conversationally, stepping around Callum's struggling form. "So much power. So little understanding of how to use it." He traced a finger along one of the glowing sigils, and Callum's roar became a howl of pain. "They rely on brute force. Instinct. They've never learned to be subtle."

“You want to know why I waited?” He straightened his cuffs, unhurried. “The Thornwood estate has wards older than this country. Old magic, woven into the iron and the land itself. Crossing onto that property would have been… inadvisable. Even for me.” He smiled at Callum’s straining form, tracing another sigil that sent him howling in pain. “So I watched. Sent messages. Left her little gifts. Let you feel me closing in while I waited for her to leave you. As I knew she would surely do. And here we are.”

"What are you?" The words came out barely a whisper.

"I'm what I've always been, sweetheart." He was close now, too close, that familiar cologne mixing with something else, something that smelled like ozone and decay. "The man who loves you. The man who's going to take you home."

"You're not—you can't be—"

"Human?" He laughed, and the sound was wrong too, layered with harmonics that didn't belong to a human voice. "I'm more than human. Have been for years. Did you think it was coincidence that I found you every time you ran? That I always knew where you were, what you were doing, who you were talking to?" His hand cupped my cheek, and his touch burned cold.

Behind him, Callum was still fighting the sigils, his partially shifted form twisting against the magical bonds. Blood dripped from where the bindings cut into his flesh. His golden eyes found mine, desperate, furious, helpless in a way I'd never seen him.

Run, those eyes said. Run, Serena.

But I couldn't run. My legs wouldn't move. My whole body felt heavy, distant, like I was watching this happen to someone else.

"More than a survivor,‌" Marcus continued, savoring the words. "I have learned how to thrive in this world. The things I've had to do to get this far, to accumulate this much power..." He shook his head. "You wouldn't believe the sacrifices. But you're going to make it all worth it."

"The Beaumonts," Callum growled through teeth that were too long, too sharp. "are you working with the Beaumonts or just with Glenn."

"Working with is a strong term." Marcus didn't even look at him. His eyes were fixed on me, drinking me in. "We have aligned interests. They don’t want her with you mutts anymore than I do. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement."

His fingers pressed something damp against my face. The smell hit me first, chemical and sweet, cutting through the ozone and decay. My vision blurred. My thoughts scattered.

"No—" I tried to pull away, but my limbs weren't responding. The world was tilting, spinning.