Marking the Alpha My Cousin Couldn't Tame Chapter 6

Liora didn't give up.

She pulled herself upright, blood smeared across her cheek from my slap, and turned to Kaelen with the full force of fifty years' worth of rehearsed grief.

"You knelt at my parents' graves. You swore you'd protect me." Her voice shook—or she made it shake. "And now you stand there while she beats me in front of your own pack? What would my mother think? What would my father say if he could see this?"

The crowd shifted. I felt it—the sympathy swinging back her way. Dead heroes outweighed a slapped cheek every time.

*My stomach dropped.*

"You're right," Kaelen said.

Two words. My blood went cold. My hand was already reaching for the mark on his neck—the one I'd given him, the one that could still fade. If he sided with her now, I'd rip the contract apart tonight.

"Which is why we'll let the truth speak for itself." He turned his head. "Sable."

A figure stepped out from the tree line. The pack witch moved without sound, a leather pouch in one hand. The crowd parted for her.

Sable opened her palm. A shard of moonstone sat in the center, pale and cracked with silver veins. She closed her fingers around it.

The stone cracked. Silver light spread through the clearing like smoke.

And there it was.

Liora's face, clear as day. Her fingers gripping my arm. Her whisper—*whose name would he call first*—then her palms slamming into my back. The cliff edge vanishing beneath me. My body dropping into the dark.

Every wolf in Cold Moon saw it. The image hung in the air for three long seconds before dissolving.

No one spoke. Liora's face went the color of ash.

One of the older she-wolves cleared her throat. "She lost her parents so young... perhaps we could show some leniency—"

"And who showed leniency to my wife?" Kaelen's voice was quiet, but it carried. "She drove across the country to a pack she'd never seen. In her first week, she was framed and thrown off a cliff. She climbed back up with her own claws. And the first thing she heard was her own pack calling her a liar."

He looked at Liora.

"Your parents gave their lives so others could survive. That sacrifice deserves to be honored—not weaponized." He paused. "From today, the pack will still provide for you. But I'm no longer your guardian. Don't use their memory as a leash again."

He took my hand. We walked away.

Behind us, Liora screamed something. I didn't catch the words. Kaelen didn't turn.

Back at the house, he sat me down, brought a mug of something warm, and knelt in front of me to clean the cuts on my palms. His hands were steady. His face was not.

"I let her get too close for too long," he said, not looking up. "I thought protecting her was honoring her parents. I didn't see what it was doing."

I watched him wrap a strip of cloth around my torn hand. Gentle, for someone built like a siege weapon.

When he finished, he didn't let go. His thumb traced the edge of the bandage, then moved to my wrist. My pulse. He stayed like that for a moment, kneeling in front of me, head bowed, my hand in both of his.

Then he leaned forward. His lips brushed the inside of my wrist—so light I almost missed it—before his mouth moved higher. My forearm. My shoulder. My neck.

His breath was warm against the spot just below my ear.

"You sure about this?" I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant. "Once it's done, no take-backs."

He lifted his head. His mouth was close to my neck. "You didn't exactly ask my permission at the ceremony."

My face burned. "That was different. That was impulse."

"Then I'm having one too."

His canines broke skin. Warmth flooded through me—not pain. Something deeper. A circuit completing.

I could feel him. Not just his breath on my neck, but something beneath that—steady, solid, unmistakably his. A thread that hadn't been there a second ago.

*Oh. So this is what it's supposed to feel like.*

His forehead rested against my shoulder. My fingers were twisted in the back of his shirt. The bond hummed between us—new, fragile, already impossible to ignore.

I grabbed his jaw and tilted his face up to mine.

"I don't care if it's Liora or whoever comes next. Any woman gets between us again, I'll make what happened on that cliff look like a gentle push."

He laughed. Actually laughed—low and warm, catching my fist before I could punch his shoulder.

"Whatever my Luna says." His thumb traced my knuckles. "Now—I can feel your heartbeat through the bond for the first time. Can you stop being angry long enough for me to enjoy it?"