The mark is beautiful.
It covers my chest from collarbone to the curve of my breasts—intricate lines of red-gold that shimmer when the light catches them. A dragon in flight, wings spread wide, flames trailing from its scales. Rurik’s dragon. His essence. Permanently inked into my skin like the world’s most intimate tattoo.
“It’s gorgeous.” The words come out awed. Reverent. “I didn’t expect it to be so...”
“Chaotic?” Rurik traces the lines with his fingertip, watching the mark shimmer in response. “Wild? Reckless? Slightly terrifying?”
“I was going to say beautiful.” I catch his hand. Press it flat against the mark. “But those work too.”
He grins. That wild, bright grin that makes my heart flip. “Matches its owner, then.”
“Flatterer.”
“Truth-teller.” He leans down, presses a kiss to the center of the mark. Warmth blooms where his lips touch—theclaiming responding to its creator. “You’re mine now. Officially. Permanently. The whole territory will know it.”
“Good.” I stretch beneath him, feeling loose and sated and more at peace than I’ve been since before I was taken. “Let them know.”
He settles beside me, pulling me against his chest. We lie tangled together in the fading light, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear, the claiming mark pulsing in time with both of us.
That’s when I notice.
I sit up. Stare at my wrist—the wrist where Valdris’s brand burned for weeks. The wrist that ached and whispered and marked me as the Crimson Queen’s property.
The skin is smooth. Unmarked. Nothing but faint freckles and the pale remnants of manacle scars.
The brand is gone.
“Rurik.” My voice comes out strange. Hollow. “Look.”
He sits up beside me. Takes my wrist in his hands, turning it toward the window light. His thumb traces where the brand used to be—that ugly, burned-in mark that Valdris seared into my flesh to track me, to own me, to remind me that I was hers.
“It’s gone.” Wonder fills his voice. “The claiming... it burned it out.”
I stare at the empty space. At the absence of the thing that haunted me for weeks. The mark that let Valdris whisper in my dreams, that let her find me no matter where I ran, that branded me as prey.
Gone. Completely gone.
“Your fire replaced hers.” Rurik’s hand moves from my wrist to my chest, pressing against the claiming mark—his dragon, permanently etched into my skin. “The claiming doesn’t share. When I marked you as mine, it destroyed any other claim on you. Including hers.”
My breath catches. “I’m free.”
“You’re free.” He pulls me into his arms, holds me tightly against his chest. “She’s dead, her brand is gone, and you’re mine. No one else’s. Never anyone else’s.”
“Promise?”
“Eternally.” He pulls back just enough to meet my gaze. Those wild eyes hold steady—no jokes, no deflection, just pure truth. “You’re stuck with me now, Aisling. For centuries. For millennia, if we’re lucky. Every nightmare. Every dawn. Every moment in between.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It will be.” His grin flickers to life. “I’m told I’m very annoying.”
“Incredibly annoying.” I press a kiss to his jaw. “Obnoxious. Reckless. Boundary-violating.”
“Keep going. This is doing wonders for my ego.”
“Also kind.” Another kiss, to the corner of his mouth. “Brave. Loyal. The only person who’s ever made me feel safe enough to fall apart.”
His breath catches. “Aisling.”
