MARKED

PACK BUSINESS

Dead.

In less than a month, my mate... this girl with her long legs, full lips, and a body Kim Kardashian would even be jealous of... a girl who blew into my life without so much as a warning, will be dead. According to her pack prophet. And I'd love to chalk it up to the ramblings of a mad woman, but I've never met a pack prophet whose premonitions didn'tcome true.

Kiara knew this, and she allowed me to mark her anyway. To take the first step of claiming her knowing we were on borrowed time.

Fuck!

Just... fuck!

The Moon Goddess must truly hate me if she's mated me to a girl who will be dead in less than a month. And how selfish of Kiara to keep this from me?

"Permission to speak freely?" Eli asks.

"No." I wave him off.

Ignoring my command, he speaks anyway.

"Do not hold it against her. She's spent months avoiding you to prevent you from having to suffer another loss."

"Didn't I just tell you not to speak?" I stare incredulously at him.

Glancing briefly at Bo and Tai, I give them a nod and they bury their fists in his stomach. Eli drops to his knees, but I must give him credit where's its due. He's got heart. He shakily climbs back to his feet and tries my patience again.

"If you love her like I believe you do, it shouldn't matter. Make her final days memorable ones."

This time I don't enlist my handlers to do my dirty work and I deck him in the face myself.

"Stop. Talking." I warn him.

Wiping the blood from his mouth, Eli is back on his feet again. And if he wasn't so blatantly defiant, or his actions so disrespectful to me as his alpha, I might be impressed.

"She needs you." He tells me.

The thin tether holding back my temper snaps and I'm on him in an instant.

"She needs me. To do what exactly? What good is she to me as a shifter who can't shift? What good is she to me if she'll be dead in less than a month? Had I have known any of this, I would've-"

"You would've what?" Kiara asks. Standing in the doorway with a world of hurt on her face.

I'm sorry she heard me, but it needed to be said.

She's put me in a bind.

So, I opt for honesty instead of treading lightly where her feelings are concerned. And I tell her, "I would've let them sell you to Elijah Grey."

Hurt skitters across her face for a moment before it disappears as quickly as it came. But I don't need her to speak to know what she's thinking. Thanks to my mark, I get a front row seat to everything she thinks and feels. And my words may as well have been a heart-seeking-missile, tuned to the frequency of her heart. Because with a single sentence, I've completely obliterated it.

With tears stinging her eyes, Kiara nods, swallows hard, and walks away.

Shit.

"You're a special kind of dick... you know that?" Eli glowers at me.

Don't I know it.

Even as I knock out two of his teeth for his continued defiance and have him taken away.