A mark can be faked. But what about a soul bond?

Mira's POV

"My — wife?"

Cyrus let out a quiet, contemptuous laugh, the sound low and edged with something that hadn't quite become anger yet. He lifted his arm from Angelina's waist and rose to his feet, walking toward me.

Angelina's mocking eyes, the gamma's stare, the servants peering in from the doorway — none of it registered. There was only him, crossing the room, step by step.

I was on the floor, propped up on my elbows against the cold tile, trying to push myself upright. The wounds on my knees were still bleeding, the fabric soaked through and stuck to the raw flesh beneath — every small movement pulled at the skin and sent a fresh spike of pain through my legs.

But I couldn't afford to think about that. He was coming.

"Cyrus—"

I looked up, full of something I hadn't earned the right to feel yet. He stopped half a step in front of me, close enough that I could make out the subtle pattern woven into the buttons of his shirt.

I opened my mouth to speak.

Cyrus raised one hand, and his fingers shifted — lengthening, sharpening — and then his claws were wrapped around my throat.

The grip tightened in an instant.

My feet left the ground. I hung suspended in the air, his claws locked around my windpipe, the pressure squeezing the air out of my lungs in slow, relentless increments. My hands flew to my throat on instinct, clawing at his grip — but it was useless. I only managed to rake my own neck open, leaving thin lines of blood across my skin, and his hold didn't give even slightly.

"My bride will only ever be Angelina." His voice was flat and certain. "The son of an Alpha — why would I take an omega as a wife?"

He stepped forward half a pace. His nose nearly grazed the side of my neck, and the scent hit me all at once — cedarwood, clean and familiar, the same scent that had surrounded me on countless nights when I had pressed my face into the curve of his neck and let it carry me to sleep. Back then he would soften every sharp edge he had, his hand moving slowly through my hair. Now that same scent sent a chill crawling across every inch of my skin.

Cyrus held still at my neck for two seconds, his nostrils shifting almost imperceptibly. I watched his lashes lower, casting a shadow beneath his eyes, and for one suspended moment I thought — I was certain — that he was about to do what he used to do, tilt his head down and press his lips to my pulse point.

He didn't.

"Filthy servant." He pulled back half a step, his brow drawing down. "Masking your disgusting scent with Angelina's."

I tried to shake my head. I wanted to say I hadn't — that it was Angelina who had stolen everything from me — but my throat produced nothing, only the ragged labor of trying to breathe.

"For that offense, add ten more lashes."

Angelina spoke without being asked. Cyrus made no move to stop her. He simply dropped me, his grip releasing with the same disinterest one might show discarding something broken.

Angelina smiled — slow and satisfied — and crooked one finger. The gamma placed the silver whip in her hand without a moment's hesitation.

The whip rose. The air split past my ear.

The first stroke landed across my back. The tip was loaded with specially treated silver powder, and the moment it made contact with my skin, the flesh ignited — a white, searing burn that snapped through me so sharply my entire body convulsed in midair.

Cyrus still did not call it off.

The second stroke. The third.

Each lash came down trailing the smell of scorched skin, the silver powder forcing itself into the open wounds and spreading through my bloodstream like fire, burning outward through my arms and legs in slow, grinding waves. The pain was so total, so consuming, that my voice died somewhere before it could become a scream.

One week ago, he had pressed his mouth to even the smallest cut on my skin, unwilling to leave it untended. Now he stood and watched another woman take a silver-loaded whip to my body and did nothing.

I don't know how long it lasted. Eventually the dark mist coiled around my throat dissolved all at once, and I dropped — hit the floor hard, every bone in my body rattling loose on impact.

The pain was everywhere.

Drilling inward, relentless, the kind that tunneled past flesh and refused to stop.

I gritted my teeth. My fingers trembled as I reached for my chest, grabbed the already-torn neckline, and pulled. The fabric gave, exposing the skin below my collarbone — and there it was. A crescent mark, silver-white against my skin.

A brand Cyrus had put there himself.

"Cyrus." I was breathless, my fingertip resting over the crescent, shaking. "This is the mark you left on me."

I kept my voice as small as I could make it, afraid that if I spoke too loudly I might shatter something neither of us could put back together.

"Have you forgotten all of it?"

Cyrus's gaze dropped to the crescent on my chest and went still. His brow began to draw together, slowly, by degrees.

Eight years ago, my grandfather had brought me to the Cyrus family to fulfill a contracted betrothal. The Alpha — Cyrus's father — had wanted me expelled from the pack the moment he laid eyes on me. I was a stain on the bloodline, and he would not allow something like me to remain within it. But Cyrus had gone behind his parents, behind the entire family, and burned this crescent into my skin without permission. The mark bound us: if anything happened to me, he would fade with me. Gone, the same as I would be.

It was his proof — that he had placed his life between me and everything that wanted me erased.

Cyrus had told me once: no matter when, no matter where — the moment he saw the crescent, he would remember me.

I watched the focus drain from his eyes, his gaze anchored to the brand with an intensity that had stopped being readable. Across the room, Angelina lost her composure — a sharp look thrown at the nearest servant, and the servant was already moving, snatching up a coat and crossing the floor at a half-run, hands fumbling as he moved to drape it over my shoulders.

Cyrus said nothing. He didn't move either, and because he didn't move, the servant didn't dare follow through — he stood frozen with the coat suspended between us, arms raised, not committing to the act. Cyrus's eyes never left the mark.

The wire that had been pulled taut inside my chest loosened, just slightly, just enough.

He remembered. Maybe not all of it — but the mark had reached something in him.

"Cyrus—"

I had barely gotten his name out, my wrist moving forward half an inch, fingers reaching for the hem of his sleeve — when he shoved the servant aside and crossed the distance in two strides. He dropped into a crouch directly in front of me, right hand already moving, and before I could register what was happening his fingertips had split into claws. No hesitation. He drove them straight into the brand on my chest.

The sound of flesh being pierced was very clear.

The pain hit like something cold and sharp driven inward all at once, and my body arched back before I could stop it. Both hands locked around his wrist with everything I had — but the muscle beneath my fingers was rigid, immovable, as though his arm had been cast from something harder than bone. I looked at his face. Expressionless. Utterly still. And something tore open in a place the wound in my chest couldn't account for.

Cyrus curled his claws inward. The tips ground through the flesh, twisting slowly.

What had been a clean, silver-white crescent was now a blackened ruin.

He withdrew his hand. Blood clung to his fingertips, dripping onto the tile in slow, even intervals — one drop, then another.

Angelina came forward and looped both arms around Cyrus's neck from behind, her chin settling onto his shoulder as she looked down at me. The expression on her face was the kind reserved for things that don't deserve to be looked at directly.

"An omega is an omega." She let out a short, derisive sound. "Nothing but lies from a filthy mouth."

As she spoke, she reached down and lifted the hem of her skirt. On the outer side of her thigh, clearly visible, was a bite mark — and encircling it, a wolf's head, vivid and unmistakable.

I stared at it. My ears filled with a low, droning sound.

How.

That placement. That mark. It was the kind that could only pass between bonded mates.

He had given to her what had belonged to me.

"This," Angelina said, "is the Cyrus family brand."

Cyrus stood. He accepted a handkerchief from the servant beside him and cleaned the blood from his fingertips with unhurried, methodical strokes. He looked down at me from where he stood, and the temperature behind his eyes was colder than it had been even moments ago.

"A silver-white crescent?"

He dropped the bloodstained handkerchief at my feet. The red against the white fabric was stark and bright.

"Omega — do you really think any wolf's mark can pass for my family's brand?"

I couldn't move. Couldn't think.

Cyrus had truly forgotten. Forgotten me. Forgotten everything that had existed between us across eight years.

"Cyrus — if you don't remember the brand, the soul bond can't lie."

I reached up and took his hand, and pressed it flat against my abdomen — still smooth, still unshowing.

In the next instant, Cyrus felt it against his palm — a heartbeat, strong and insistent. And from somewhere close, carried on the edge of hearing, came the sound of a small wolf's cry.