Chapter 65 Marks like mine

Chapter 65 Marks like mine

Sera's Pov

The horn didn't stop.

Three long blasts, then a pause, then two short ones and whatever that sequence meant, it meant it badly, because Maera was already moving before the echo died.

"Stay close to me," she said.

She always said that, like I did not have power of my own. But I was already behind her.

The tunnels felt different at a run. The lantern light stuttered along the walls and threw shadows that moved wrong, and I kept my eyes on Maera's back and tried not to think about what was waiting at the end of them.

Terry had his weapon drawn before we reached the outer chamber. Tobias was right behind him.

Damien stepped in from a side passage and fell into stride beside me without a word, one hand already at the blade on his hip.

I heard voices before I saw anything. Then I saw her.

She was young. Younger than me, maybe fifteen, sitting on the ground with her back against the stone wall and three of us surrounding her. She wasn't fighting, she wasn't crying either. She just sat there with her arms around her knees and her chin up, watching everyone with calmness.

The marks on her arms stopped me cold.

"Maera." My voice came out strange. "Those are—"

"I see them," Maera said.

The same lines. The same silver pattern climbing up the skin. Not identical to mine, it was different in the arrangement, different in how far they'd spread, but the same. Unmistakably the same.

Damien moved forward. "Who sent you?"

The girl looked at him without flinching. "I'm not answering that yet."

"You're in no position to stall."

"I'm in exactly the position I was sent here to be in," she said. "So either someone who matters asks me the right question, or we all sit here until the horn goes again."

A beat of complete stillness moved through the room.

Then Caden, from somewhere behind me, said: "She's not scared."

"That's either brave or trained."

"Can't it be both?"

He didn't answer that. I turned slightly and found him closer than I expected, his shoulder almost level with mine, his eyes still on the girl across the room.

"You good? We should probably talk about earlier." he asked.

The question was so simple it caught me off guard. L Like the answer actually mattered to him and he'd rather have the real one.

"I don't know yet," I said honestly.

He nodded once. Like that was enough.

Maera was already crouching in front of the girl, her voice low and measured. "You have marks like hers." She tilted her head toward me. "How long?"

"Since the last new moon," the girl said.

"Did they hurt when they came in?"

"Like I was being taken apart and put back wrong."

Maera glanced back at me briefly. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking it too.

"What's your name?" I asked.

The girl looked past Maera to find me. Her eyes moved over my arms where my own marks sat, then back up to my face. "Wren."

"Wren." I stepped forward. "Who sent you?"

The room went very still.

Wren held my gaze for three full seconds, like she was measuring whether I could hold what she was about to say.

Then she said. "The banished Alpha. I mean, your father."

Nobody moved after she said that, we all seemed to stare at her in shock. Tobias was the first to speak. "That's not possible."

"And yet here I am," Wren said.

"Marcus Silvercrest is captured," Damien said. His voice had gone flat. "We confirmed it."

"You confirmed what you were meant to confirm," she said calmly. "He needed you to believe that. All of you." Her eyes came back to me. "He said you'd understand why when I told you the rest."

I couldn't find words. My chest felt like it had been hollowed out and something enormous poured into the empty space.

"She's lying," Terry said. "She might be a spy. Get her up—"

"Don't scare her." I said it sharply enough that he stopped. "Nobody touches her."

Silence moved through the room again.

Damien looked at me carefully. Maera said nothing. Everyone was waiting for me to fall apart or take charge and I was standing there trying to figure out which one I was capable of.

"Keep her here," I said to Maera. "Keep her comfortable, nobody has to intimidate her." I looked at Wren directly. "I'm coming back and you're going to tell me everything."

“It's good to see someone with common sense around here.” Wren nodded once.

I walked out. I didn't have a destination. I just needed walls that weren't full of people watching my face. I turned down the nearest passage and walked until the voices behind me faded and it was just the sound of my own footsteps and the low flicker of the lanterns.

Then footsteps behind me. I already knew who it was before I turned around.

Caden stopped a few feet away. He had his arms crossed and his back slightly angled against the tunnel wall, like he wasn't sure if he was allowed to be here and had decided to come anyway.

"You followed me, again." I said.

"I walked in the same direction as you," he said. "Technically different."

I turned back to face the tunnel ahead and leaned against the opposite wall. The stone was cold through my training gear. The marks on my arms had gone back to that low steady glow, not painful, not urgent. Just there.

"Your father," Caden said quietly.

"You're about to say something reasonable and I'm not ready for that."

He was quiet for a beat. "What are you ready for?"

I looked at him. "Honestly? Nothing. Absolutely nothing about any of this."

"Yeah." He exhaled slowly.

"It tracks," I repeated. "Caden Wolfe, everybody."

"You're doing the sarcasm thing."

"The sarcasm keeps me from crying"

"I know." He said it gently enough that I had to look away. "Sera."

"Don't say my name like that."

I pressed my lips together hard and stared at the far wall. The lantern between us threw uneven light across the stone and I focused on that instead of on him because focusing on him was dangerous in ways I didn't have the energy to manage right now.

"Then keep it to yourself," I said. "Because I can handle enemies, Caden. I can handle training and Blood Moons and factions and marks taking over my skin. What I cannot handle—" I stopped.

"What?" he asked.

I turned and looked at him fully.

He was already watching me. Had probably been watching me the whole time. His jaw was set and his eyes were tired in a way that wasn't about sleep, and he hadn't moved any closer but he hadn't moved away either, and the tunnel between us felt about a mile shorter than it actually was.

"You being kind to me," I said. "I can't handle that right now."

He held my gaze. "Then I'll be terrible. Would that help?"

I laughed before I could stop it. One short, real, completely involuntary laugh.

Neither of us said anything and neither of us moved and the lantern flickered once between us and I thought about how much I hated that I believed him.

Then Maera's voice broke through from the chamber behind us. Sharp and urgent in a way she never allowed herself to sound.

"Sera. You need to hear this."

I pushed off the wall.

Caden fell into step beside me.

When we walked back into the chamber, Wren was on her feet. The marks on her arms were glowing now, not dimly, brightly and her face had lost the careful calm she'd been wearing since we found her.

She looked straight at me.

"Your father isn't just alive and well," she said. "He's been free for six days. And he sent me ahead because what's c
oming—" She paused. "He needed you to have warning before he gets here."

My pulse spiked. "Warning about what?"

Wren's eyes didn't waver.

"About who's with him."