Zara's POV
Pain exploded through my entire body.
Not the dull ache from my cuts and bruises. This was different—like lightning racing through my veins, burning me from the inside out. My back arched. My mouth opened in a silent scream. The glowing marks on my skin blazed so bright I couldn't see anything else.
Then Kaelen's hand was in mine and suddenly I could feel everything he felt. His determination. His fear. His desperate hope that this would work. Our hearts beat together—thump-thump, thump-thump—like they were the same heart.
Something invisible wrapped around us both, pulling tight. Tighter. So tight I couldn't breathe.
Then it snapped into place and the pain vanished.
I gasped, stumbling. Kaelen caught me, his arms steady and strong. "Did it work?" I managed to ask.
He stared at his chest where a glowing blue mark—my mark—now burned on his skin. "Yes. We're bonded."
"What does that mean?"
"It means—"
A roar cut him off. The warriors had found us.
Kaelen shoved me behind him as the first attacker burst through the trees. A massive man covered in brown fur—bear-kin, I guessed. He swung a club the size of my leg at Kaelen's head.
Kaelen caught it. With one hand. The bear-kin's eyes went wide with shock.
"That's impossible," the warrior growled. "No wolf is that strong—"
Kaelen ripped the club away and slammed it into the bear's stomach. The huge warrior flew backward and crashed into a tree so hard the trunk cracked.
Holy crap. Was that because of the bond? Because of me?
More warriors surrounded us. Wolf-kin, hawk-kin, even a massive boar with tusks that could gore an elephant. All of them looked ready to kill.
"Last chance," the biggest wolf-kin called out. "Give us the Marked human and we'll let you live, Kaelen. You were a good alpha once. Don't die for a stranger."
"She's not a stranger anymore." Kaelen's voice was calm but deadly. "She's my bonded. My pack. And anyone who touches her dies."
The warriors attacked all at once.
What happened next was impossible. Kaelen moved like liquid death—faster than anything that big should move. He dodged claws, blocked weapons, struck back with brutal efficiency. Every hit sent warriors flying. Every kick broke bones.
But there were too many. Even bonded and super-strong, he couldn't fight a dozen trained killers forever.
A hawk-kin dove from above, talons aimed at my throat. I screamed and threw up my arms uselessly.
Blue light exploded from my marks.
The hawk-warrior hit the light like hitting a wall and tumbled backward with a screech. My hands tingled with heat and power. Had I just done that? How?
"Zara!" Kaelen's voice in my head. Actually IN MY HEAD. "Focus that power! Push it outward!"
I didn't know what he meant but I tried. I imagined the burning energy in my chest flowing down my arms, out my hands, forming a shield around us both.
The blue light expanded into a dome. When warriors hit it, they bounced back like they'd hit solid stone. We were protected. Safe inside my weird glowing bubble.
"How am I doing this?" I shouted.
"Bond magic!" Kaelen fought his way back to me, breathing hard. "Your power feeds mine. My strength feeds yours. We're connected now."
A connection I could feel humming between us like an invisible rope. Through it, I sensed his exhaustion, his pain from wounds I couldn't see, his fierce determination to keep me alive.
The warriors regrouped outside my shield, circling like sharks.
"This changes nothing," the lead wolf growled. "You can't hold that shield forever, Marked One. Eventually you'll tire. And when you do, we'll rip you both apart."
He was right. Already my arms shook from effort. The shield flickered.
"We need to run," I told Kaelen. "Can you run?"
"Can you keep the shield up while we move?"
"I don't know. Maybe?"
"Good enough." He grabbed my hand. "On three. One... two... THREE!"
We ran. I kept my free hand raised, desperately holding the shield around us as we sprinted through the jungle. Branches whipped past. Roots tried to trip me. Behind us, the warriors howled and gave chase.
My shield sputtered and died after maybe thirty seconds. I just didn't have the strength.
"Keep going!" Kaelen pulled me faster. "There's a place we can hide—the Deadwood. They won't follow us there."
"Why not?"
"Because nothing living survives in the Deadwood."
Oh. Great. That sounded promising.
We burst through a wall of thorns and suddenly everything changed. The red jungle ended abruptly, replaced by gray twisted trees with no leaves. The ground was ash instead of dirt. Even the air tasted dead—cold and empty.
The pursuing warriors skidded to a stop at the border.
"You're fools!" one shouted. "The Deadwood will kill you slower than we would!"
"Maybe," Kaelen called back. "But at least we'll die free."
He pulled me deeper into the gray wasteland. Behind us, the warriors didn't follow. They just watched with pity in their eyes.
That scared me more than anything.
We walked for what felt like hours through the dead forest. Nothing moved. No birds, no bugs, no wind. Just silence so heavy it pressed on my ears.
"Kaelen," I whispered. "What is this place?"
"Where the first Marked One died." His voice was hollow. "Three hundred years ago. She tried to unite the clans and they murdered her. Her death curse poisoned the land. Now nothing grows here. Nothing lives here."
"Except us. We're here."
"For now."
The bond between us pulsed with his fear. He was terrified but hiding it. Trying to be brave for me.
I squeezed his hand. "Hey. We survived the river. We survived the warriors. We'll survive this too."
He looked at me with those golden wolf eyes and something in them made my heart skip. "You're the strangest human I've ever met."
"You're the only wolf-kin I've ever met, so you're pretty strange to me too." I tried to smile. "We make a weird team."
"The weirdest."
We kept walking until exhaustion forced us to stop. Kaelen found a hollow in a dead tree big enough for both of us. We crawled inside, huddling together for warmth. His body heat felt amazing in the cold dead air.
"Get some sleep," he murmured. "I'll keep watch."
"You need sleep too. You fought so hard—"
"I'm fine. The bond healed most of my wounds." He brushed hair from my face with surprising gentleness. "You did that. Your power fixed me."
"Really?"
"Really." He smiled—the first real smile I'd seen on his face. "You're stronger than you think, Zara."
I wanted to believe him. But looking around at the dead gray forest, feeling the wrongness in the air, I wasn't so sure.
Still, wrapped in Kaelen's arms with the bond humming between us, I felt safer than I had since arriving in this nightmare world.
I closed my eyes and started to drift off.
That's when I heard it.
Singing.
A woman's voice, beautiful and haunting, echoing through the Deadwood. Singing words in a language I didn't know but somehow understood:
"Marked One, Marked One, come to me... Your destiny awaits in the dead tree... Marked One, Marked One, don't you see? You're not the first, you're number three..."
My eyes snapped open. "Kaelen. Do you hear—"
He was unconscious. Deeply, unnaturally unconscious. I shook him but he didn't wake.
The singing got louder. Closer.
I looked out of our hollow and saw her. A woman made of white mist, glowing faintly as she drifted between the dead trees. Her face was beautiful but wrong—too perfect, too empty, like a corpse's face.
She stopped right outside our hiding spot and smiled at me with black teeth.
"There you are, little Marked One. I've been waiting so long for you to come home."