The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 163

Chapter 163: XV

Valka

Prying Drustan out of Kara’s arms proves impossible--that is, without hurting either of them. I watch in slow horror as the human children shriek in our terror and she sucks.

Jessamine’s sobbing to the side, yanking at Kara’s legs, telling her she’s hurting her brother. Tristan’s clapping and giggling. Asterin has the strangest, stricken expression on his face, a newly found curiosity as he notes each swallow Kara takes.

Lucien’s hand clamps on Kara’s shoulder, his grip merciless as he peers into her grey eyes and speaks a single word, stripped of emotion.

"Sleep."

And even then, she didn’t just sleep. She screeches.

The sound is animal, torn straight from her lungs as she claws for Drustan, who has gone eerily still in my arms, his small body slack with shock. Her screams rake the air until they fracture into hoarse, broken sounds. Thrashing. Then nothing.

Her body collapses. Her eyelids flutter and fall shut.

She breathes softly, peacefully, as if my son’s blood is not streaked across her mouth, still gleaming wetly on her chin.

I look down at Drustan.

His amber eyes are darkened, the sun in his eyes almost swallowed whole by that darkness. His small fingers fist in my sleeve with desperate strength. He wheezes as he begins to cry, breath hitching, tears spilling unchecked down his cheeks. His mouth trembles as he tries to explain, words tangled and wrong.

"I just said she pretty," he sobs. "I didn’t wanna hurt her. I thought... I thought her hair pretty."

My hands shake as I cup his face, wiping away the blood, checking him desperately for the puncture hidden underneath all that blood. His skin is too warm. Too flushed. "I’m sorry. Show me where it hurts, baby."

His head falls back against my chest in a gasp, and he shrieks so loudly, it splinters in my skull like a song with broken keys. "It burns, Ma! It burns!"

My breath catches as I tilt his head.

Lucien is kneeling by my side instantly, prying Drustan from my arms with unmistakable urgency. One claw slices cleanly through the back of Drustan’s shirt. Lucien’s breathing goes harsh, uneven.

"What... is... that?" Melene breathes.

The blood on Drustan’s skin is moving.

Not dripping. Spreading.

It crawls over his pulse point like spilled ink, coiling into a smooth spiral, a curved, dark shape formed too perfectly to be accident. A single dark eye sits at its centre. Its a curled half of a circle.

Drustan’s skin sizzles.

He whimpers once before Lucien slams his palm over the mark, frost blooming outward from his touch. Ice bites down hard, crackling through the air.

Drustan sighs, his body easing, brows knitting faintly as his breathing steadies. His cries fade into silence as he leans further into Lucien’s touch. His eyes slip shut.

When Lucien pulls his hand away, the symbol has darkened further burned in.

Lucien’s mouth tightens. "It’s a Yang. I assume she carries the other half."

I crawl to where Melene kneels beside Kara’s sleeping form and wrench down the girl’s collar.

There it is.

A darker replica stamped over the girl’s heart.

We weren’t even gone twenty minutes. How could this happen? "What does this mean?" I ask, feeling an abnormal kind of rage. I stare at the sleeping girl and while I do feel pity for her, all I see is Rafael, placing a mark on my family once more. And for one moment, just one fleeting second, I think something so horribly vile, I chasten myself.

She’s only four. She’s a little girl. She is not Rafael. She is Astrea’s daughter--someone’s daughter. I may feel protective over my son but only a truly vile person would even think of snuffing out a child over a childish fight.

I blink back the haze of maternal, killing instinct and peer at the mark once more. "What does it--this--mean?"

No shit.

My nostrils flare. "Since you seem not to understand what it means to be marked, because you’ve always been the one doing the marking, let me explain. When that person is in the room, they are all you see. All you notice. All you smell. They bleed into your sleep. Into your thoughts. You start dreaming about them every night. Dreaming about touching them. Fucking them. Or them fucking you. You start to ache for them. Hunger for them. Their moods become yours. Their happiness lifts you, their anger poisons you, their grief crushes you. And if you fight it, if you try to resist, it turns into torture. The tether tightens until it feels stronger than your own will."

I spin on him. "Do you not realize our son is in danger? And to make it worse, this is your son and your great-granddaughter. This is incest," I shriek.

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