Chapter 120
Kara
The hot water should have soothed my aching muscles. Cole had been gentle—so gentle—but my body still hummed with the aftermath of our joining at Beluga Point. I stood before the fogged mirror in my new bedroom's bathroom, steam curling around me like ghosts, and let the towel drop.
That's when I saw them.
Purple-black bruises bloomed across my shoulder like grotesque flowers. Fingerprint-shaped marks wrapped around my upper arm. Scratches—four parallel lines—raked down from my collarbone toward my breast. I stared, my hand hovering over the worst of them, not quite touching. Tyler. The library. His hands grabbing me when my Luna scent exploded, when Cole's-ozone hadn't yet wrapped around me in protection.
I'd been so terrified, so overwhelmed by my own power spiraling out of control, that I hadn't even felt the pain.
My fingers traced the edge of the largest bruise. It would fade—werewolf healing meant these marks wouldn't last more than a day or two. But Blake would see them before then. Blake, who'd been getting worse since this morning, his fire-and-leather scent going acrid with barely restrained violence whenever Asher mentioned Konstantin's name through the bond.
He's going to lose his mind.
I could hide them. A high-necked sweater, maybe some of that expensive concealer Sophia had tried to teach me about. The thought made my wolf snarl in rejection. No more hiding. No more lies between us.
The decision crystallized as I stared at my reflection—at the girl with wet golden curls and three healing bite marks on her throat, at the bruises Tyler's cruelty had painted on her skin. I was Luna now. I didn't hide.
I chose a soft off-shoulder lounging top deliberately, pulling it down to expose every purple shadow, every scratch. When Blake saw these, there would be blood. But he would see them honestly, from his mate, not discover them hidden like shameful secrets.
---
Blake
"Scarlett Reeves was stupid enough to photograph Konstantin's account books." Asher's voice was clinical, detached, but I could smell the black-ebony-tobacco fury rolling off him in waves. "Diana says she was trying to leverage evidence against him to cancel Connor's debt. For Celeste."
The air in my father's study—our study now—shimmered with heat. My fire-and-leather scent exploded outward, so volatile that the wooden picture frames on the shelves began to crack with soft pops. Gunpowder. Sulfur. The smell of things about to ignite.
"Kara's mother." The words scraped out of my throat. "That psychotic bitch got herself and Scarlett killed trying to—what? Play vigilante? And left our girl to rot in a fucking storage closet for ten years?"
"We don't know if Celeste is dead," Asher said, but his scent told me he believed it. "The last lead points to a sleazy motel in LA and some tabloid writer named Marcus Finch. That's where Scarlett was headed before—"
"Before Konstantin's people put a bullet in her brain." I slammed my fist into the desk, watching splinters fly. My wolf clawed at my insides, demanding I shift, hunt, kill. "And now that Russian bastard is somewhere out there, probably knowing exactly where Kara is, maybe planning—"
"Blake." Asher's Alpha voice cracked like a whip, forcing my spine straight. "We don't act on impulse. We need—"
"I'm so fucking sick of needing!" Gold bled into my vision. My Rut symptoms—already hair-trigger since Asher and Cole had been marked while I was left behind—surged with vicious intensity. "Cole handled it right this morning! That piece of shit Tyler put his hands on her, and Cole broke every finger. That's how you protect your Luna!"
"And if we charge in half-cocked and get ourselves killed?" Asher's eyes flashed gold too. "What happens to Kara then?"
The bond thrummed with Cole's distant agreement, but all I could feel was the fire eating me from the inside out. Two of my brothers wore Kara's bite marks. Two of them had her scent permanently fused into their skin. And I was here, unmarked, unmated, my wolf convinced she'd never want me after everything I'd done.
"Before you do anything," Asher said, his voice gentling slightly, "see Kara. Let her—"
Kara
I was already out the door, his words dissolving into the roar of blood in my ears.
I didn't hear him knock. One moment I was pulling on soft cotton sleep shorts, the next Blake was in my room, the door swinging shut behind him with a slam that rattled the windows. His eyes—Jesus, his eyes—were more gold than blue, and the scent of him hit me like a physical force.
Gunpowder. Leather. And underneath, something burning, acrid, desperate.
Then his gaze dropped to my exposed shoulder. To the bruises. The scratches.
He went absolutely still.
"Blake—" I started, taking an instinctive step toward him.
"Who." Not a question. A command, ground out between teeth I could see shifting, elongating. His pupils had constricted to pinpoints. "Who did that to you?"
"Tyler. But Cole already—"
"Not enough." He was shaking now, fine tremors running through his massive frame. His scent spiked so hot I could barely breathe through it. "Should have ripped his throat out. Should have made him suffer—"
"Blake, listen to me—"
"No." He spun toward the door. "I'm going to finish what Cole started. I'm going to find that little shit and I'm going to—"
I threw myself in front of the door, my back against the wood. "You're not going anywhere."
"Move, Kara." Gold eyes. Fully shifted. The wolf staring at me through Blake's face, and God, my own wolf wanted to bare her throat, wanted to submit, wanted—
"No." My voice didn't shake. I made sure of it. "You're spiraling. I can feel it through the bond. This isn't just about Tyler."
Something crumpled in his expression. Before I could react, he'd scooped me into his arms—careful, so careful despite the violence coiling in every muscle—and was carrying me down the hall.
"Blake, what are you—"