Chapter 189

DEREK

“Mark me.”

The words hit me like a jolt to the spine. For a second, I thought I misheard her. The room, still pulsing with the heat of our lovemaking, went unnaturally still. My body tensed, awareness sharpening.

“What?” I asked, breath catching. My voice sounded rough, disbelieving. Maybe even scared.

She didn’t falter. “Mark me,” she said again, this time softer but more certain—like she was offering me something sacred. Her hand, warm and strong, pressed against my chest. She leaned into me, eyes full of light and fire, pinning me down as if daring me to say no.

She didn’t know. She couldn’t know.

She was still wrapped around me, her body slowly softening, but her gaze—goddess, that gaze—was so open. So trusting. My throat ached with the weight of everything I couldn’t say.

“Elena…” I reached up, cupped her face. My thumb brushed the edge of her cheekbone. “Not here. Not like this.”

A flicker of confusion crossed her face, her brows drawing together. And why wouldn’t she be confused? To her, we were two people falling in love. Unburdened by history. By pain. By the wreckage we’d left behind. This was all new to her. Clean.

To me, it was everything I ever wanted but had no right to claim.

She stared down at me, searching for something in my face, and I hated myself for the hesitation. For the cowardice. Because in this moment, with her above me, tangled in sheets and moonlight, I wanted to mark her more than I wanted to breathe. Erebus stirred restlessly within me, clawing at my ribs, his howl rising in my chest.

Claim her! Now.

I closed my eyes and pushed it back.

I’d been enjoying this too much. Pretending I was just a man falling for a woman. That she wasn’t my mate. That she hadn’t once looked at me with devastation on her face as I walked away from her. That she hadn’t disappeared from my life for six goddamn years and taken my soul with her.

But she didn’t remember any of that. Not yet.

And if she did… this—us—might vanish like mist.

The thought gutted me.

“Elena,” I said again, more gently this time. “I—”

I almost said it. I almost told her who we were to each other. Who we had been. But I stopped myself, remembering what the doctor had told me. She needed to find out on her own. She needed to figure it out for herself or the absolute worst could happen.

I stopped myself just in time and her eyes widened just slightly before the confusion settled deeper.

She was still on top of me, her hand resting against my chest, her body curled so closely into mine it felt like a second skin. And all I wanted to do was pull her closer, press my mouth to her shoulder, and leave a mark that would tell every wolf in the world she was mine.

But I couldn’t—not like this.

I kissed her forehead instead, then let my arms fall away.

And the moment shifted.

ELENA

The way he looked at me—gently, like I was breakable, like he was trying not to shatter something delicate between us—told me everything I didn’t understand. It wasn’t just restraint in his expression. It was grief. Longing.

Guilt? I couldn’t quite place it. Only that it left me feeling like I was holding a thread already fraying.

Still straddling him, I eased back a little, my thighs tightening around his hips as I shifted. The warmth between us cooled just slightly, and with it came the flicker of uncertainty rising in my chest.

“What, you want to be married first?” I asked with a lightness I didn’t feel, tossing the words out like a joke. A lifeline. Something to chase away the fragile silence.

But even as I said it, I felt it wobble—like a vase with a hairline crack, trying to hold water.

He flinched. Not much. Just a twitch in his brow, the faintest shift in his shoulders. But I saw it. Felt it. And that small, involuntary response tugged at something deep inside me, something instinctual and anxious that whispered: this matters.

I slid off him, slowly, and pulled the sheet up with me as I lay on my side. The bed dipped with my movement, a hollow in the heat where our bodies had just been joined. I propped my head on my hand, studying him in the low light.

“What is it?” I asked, softer now.

He didn’t answer right away. His gaze drifted up toward the ceiling, and I watched the muscles in his jaw flex, like he was chewing on something he didn’t want to swallow. Whatever it was, it wasn’t new. This was old pain. Buried pain.

“Have…Have you been married before?” I asked quietly, letting my eyes drift to the smooth column of his throat. There was no mark. At least none I could see. But something about the way he reacted made me wonder if he’d carried one once—and lost it. Or if the wound was invisible but just as deep.

“No,” he said, barely louder than a breath.

But it wasn’t just the word. It was the way he said it. Like the answer still hurt. Like it had taken something from him anyway.

And that—more than anything—made me ache.

I let the silence stretch between us, heavy and filled with questions I wasn’t sure I had the right to ask.

But I needed to know.

So I sat up and pulled the sheet over my chest. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he said.

I looked at him levelly. “What were you doing in the hospital? When I met you?”

His eyes flicked to mine, unreadable. “I walked into the wrong room,” he said, voice carefully neutral.

A lie. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did. Still, I let it go.

I looked down at my hands. “The reason I was in the hospital that day… Derek, I’ve had memory issues for years,” I admitted quietly. “And only one has stuck. Just one blank I can’t fill in.”

He was silent.

“I can’t remember my ex,” I said, and the air shifted like something unseen had stirred between us. “Not his face. Not his name. But I know he hurt me. Badly.”

I looked at him then. Really looked. The way his eyes had gone dark, the way his jaw clenched just slightly. Pain radiated off him, but it wasn’t defensive. It was something deeper. Rawer.

I misread it. Of course I did.

Because I thought that pain was for me.

“But that’s not you. You, you’re—” How did I encompass all the things he made me feel? All the things I knew him to be?

I leaned forward and kissed him, slow and soft. I felt him inhale sharply beneath me, his lips parting against mine.

When I pulled away, a single tear was sliding down his cheek.

My heart ached.

“And I know,” I whispered, voice thick with emotion, “that you would never hurt me.”

His breath caught.

“We haven’t known each other long, I know,” I went on, feeling a swell rise in my chest, that same surge of rightness that had carried me through the past few days. “But I… I love you.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them. And I meant them. Goddess, I meant them with every fiber of my being.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t have to.

The way he looked at me—like I was both salvation and punishment—said enough.

And for one breathless moment, I let myself believe we had forever.