Marianna
Skye’s asleep with her body curled around three of her favorite stuffed animals when I step into her room and shut off the nightlight casting stars all over her ceiling. A soft breeze whispers through thick curtains I quietly pull closed before tucking her in for what feels like the hundredth time. I’ve been on edge all day. It’s been… the worst day. First, Blake. Me shoving another wedge between us. Then, fighting with Mom… with Skye overhearing. After the fight I went down to the lake and tossed my phone into the water in a rage, then shifted, running over all of Moonrise until the sun began to set, and I slunk home to sit at the table with my mother and my daughter. My dinner was served cold. I deserved it.
I gently close Skye’s bedroom door while the mark on my neck aches. It’s a deep pain that makes my throat and shoulders sore and is relentless, but also, unfortunately, familiar.
Dean wasn’t faithful. I’m not sure he ever was. Our relationship was fast and furious and ended in a crash, but he marked me before I could fully pull away when I realized he wasn’t the man I thought he was. That sealed things. We married. I moved Skye and Mom into his pack territory. I was young, stupid, and flailing, trying to find my footing in the world and he was… a Beta. He had power and influence.
He used it.
He wasn’t going to let me go, and for the nearly two years we were together, I spent most nights tossing and turning in bed as the mark he left on my neck ached and burned while he cheated on me numerous times.
That wasn’t the worst of it. Not even close. I was done months before he started threatening Mom and Skye. I’d already ended things, moved back to the inner city and out of his pack territory. I had local authorities involved. I spent another two years trying to rebuild a life without the crushing weight of him in it. He was supposed to stay far away from me.
Three months ago, he showed up at my house after his Alpha got a visit from royal warriors for interrupting one of my practice sessions with the Crescent Falls orchestra. He’d been thrown out of his pack. It wasn’t his first transgression against his Alpha.
I did try to warn him that his bad behavior would catch up to him, and most of it didn’t have to do with me. Still, I was the target of his rage, and I still wore his mark on my neck.
He put a few more marks on me that night. Bruises. A fractured cheekbone. A dislocated shoulder. The works.
I scrub his memory from my mind and close myself into my room, busying myself by replacing the worn out strings of my violin. My laptop is open beside me on the bed playing a soft litany of classical music I plan to rework and add to the set list for the upcoming season while another screen shows a few unread emails–promotions, ads, a return email from what I hope will be Skye’s new school this fall giving me a date and time for our admission meeting.
My chest feels impossibly heavy as I pluck the strings, adjusting their tightness. My neck continues to burn until it’s to the point I can’t ignore it anymore, so I step into the bathroom where I dig through my skin care products to try to find something somewhat calming.
My reflection in the mirror is… messy. Haggard. Tired. I scrub my hand over my face before giving up and pressing a cool rag to my neck and walking back into my room where I shut off the lights and walk to the window to pull the curtains closed but… a shadow moves into view below, lingering at the gate.
“Blake?” I narrow my eyes, trying to squint through the darkness. It’s a dreary, overcast night. Even the faint glow of the streetlight two houses down doesn’t illuminate the shadow of a tall, lean man now reaching for the gate.
I pull on my robe and pad downstairs, sliding my feet into my slippers. “Blake, it’s the middle of the–” My voice cuts out as my feet come to an abrupt halt on the footpath leading to the gate.
The face scowling down at me isn’t Blake’s. The smooth, handsome curve of Blake’s jaw is replaced by a scruffy, unkempt beard in shades of deep red and blond. The wild eyes aren’t that stunning violet. No, they’re black with rage.
Dean unlatches the gate and steps into the yard.
“You’re not allowed here,” I manage to say as my neck burns like someone is pressing a boiling hot metal rod to my skin. “You need to leave. Get out of here!”
“You really fucking thought you could just walk away, huh?” Dean’s dark blond hair is cast in shadow, dirty, like he hasn’t bothered to take care of himself. I doubt he has. He lost everything over the past six months because he couldn’t leave me alone, because he slept with his Alpha’s sister, so I’ve heard, and now owes an incredible amount of money to his pack, a fine he incurred upon being exiled.
But a wolf is more dangerous as a rogue. He has nothing to lose.
And I’ve always been his target when he’s like this. Drunk out of his mind.
“Get back,” I grind out, teeth bared. “Get off my property, you disgusting bastard!”
“Eastonia, huh?” He looks around, smirking, taking several determined steps in my direction. “What did you think would happen when you left, Marianna? You’d be free? You still wear my mark. You’ll have it forever, you fucking worthless bitch. You’re mine. I should have locked things down a few months ago.”
“What do you mean?” I snarl, backing up the porch steps. I have to get inside. I have to lock the doors and call the guards at the gate for help. “You need to leave. I’m going to call the guards to come–”
“They’re busy. I made sure of that.” His sick, demented smile burrows through my stomach, twisting like a knife. I glance down at his bloody hands and feel my body careen toward the door before my mind has a chance to catch up with what’s happening, but I’m a second too late.
Dean lunges, grabbing me by the hair. I scream, but he cuts it out with a hand to my mouth. He doesn’t bother opening the door. He kicks it in in one switch motion, like he’s done this before. Broken into someone’s home.
Lights flicker on upstairs, and my fear is replaced by a sucking, all-consuming kind of dread.
“You’re going back to Crescent Falls with me,” he shouts in my ear. “Without your fucking mutant daughter, that’s for Goddess damned sure.”
I try to squirm out of his grip, biting down on his hand, but he just laughs and shoves me so hard I fly into the mantle, my forehead crashing against the wooden surface. The framed pictures and Skye’s agates tremble with the impact, but I catch myself on the wall and sway toward the foot of the stairs where I will remain.
I will not be moved from the spot, no matter how hard he hits, no matter what happens, I will not allow him to get upstairs.
Glass shatters when he swipes his hand over the mantle. Every frame falls to the ground, Skye’s agates fracturing in a shower of delicate stone. I close my eyes as he rages, screaming obscenities in my face about me, about my daughter, my mother…
“Marianna,” Mom’s voice is soft but clear from the top of the stairs.
“Call the guard station.”
“They’re not answering. I called our neighbor–”
“You belong to me,” Dean grinds out, his mouth against my cheek–hot and furious. Pain radiates through my lip when he hits me hard enough to split it, and my ears ring, but I block out the pain. All I’m thinking about is Skye and what she’ll see, what she’ll hear.
He punches me in the stomach. I remain upright, gripping either side of the bannister. He’ll have to kill me to get me to move.
I’ve been a terrible mother. I let this man into our lives to wreak havoc. She’s seen it. She saw my face the day they came home to me unconscious on the floor of the living room, bleeding. No wonder she started to shut down. It was my fault. All my fault. I failed them. I don’t know where I started going wrong, but it was my fault.
Another blow to my stomach has my grip on the bannister weakening. Dean is out of his mind, his stench of booze filling the room, mingling with what I know is my blood.
His knuckles smash against my jaw. My teeth crack as a wave of pain like I’ve never felt before nearly sends me to my knees, but I won’t move. I will not let him upstairs. I will die here before I allow him to get to Skye, which is what he really wants, isn’t it?
She has always been in his way. She was my priority, not him.
He grips my neck as his words blur. I can’t hear him anymore. I can barely register the room when I open my eyes to slits, seeing nothing but destruction and him taking up space. He squeezes until black spots shimmer around the edges of my vision.
“You’re mine. You stupid slut.”
My mouth fills with the taste of copper. A smooth, silent cloud of violet and stardust settles throughout the room before two men appear. One is dressed in jeans and an undone button-down shirt–casual. Soren’s always been casual, down to the faded, worn down blue ball cap he’s wearing backward as he races toward us and lands a vicious blow to the side of Dean’s head.
Dean lets go. I gasp for breath. Mom’s thundering footsteps merge with Blake’s as they race toward me from different directions.
I see a single glimpse of Blake’s face before my vision starts to fade. His eyes are wild. A desperation, utterly astonished expression cuts through his mask of emotional void, and then that gaze turns… murderous.
“Get her upstairs now,” Blake thunders. Mom’s arms hook under my armpits, and then she’s dragging me up the stairs.
I open my eyes as Blake watches us, his face twisting in brutal, unyielding rage.
“Blake,” I whisper, tears blurring my vision. “Blake–”
He turns away and stalks out of sight. I hear something crash, then Soren flies into view, tumbling onto the ground with an arm locked around Dean’s neck. Dean is out of his mind and on the verge of shifting, but he’s too drunk to get his wolf powers to bend to his will.
I stick out a hand before Mom can drag me around the corner at the top of the stairwell. Blake kneels, his black as night cloak flaring out behind him, but Dean goes suddenly still, his eyes flaring with magic.
Blake isn’t touching him.
Soren lets Dean go and pants as he moves away, sporting a righteous black eye. Mom and I are still as stone, watching as Blake looks at Dean from head to toe.
“Blake?” Soren says, uneasy, glancing at Blake and then down at Dean.
“I’m not doing it,” Blake says, confused, then Dean arches his back and screams bloody murder.
I brace a hand on the wall and turn toward Skye’s bedroom. The door is open, and she’s sitting on the edge of her bed, squeezing her favorite teddy bear to her chest.
Her eyes glow like vibrant violet stars.