He Dragged Me Past The Chandelier While My Mark Burned On Another Man's Wrist

The guard by the fireplace didn't look at me. He just stood with his hands clasped in front of him, eyes fixed on the marble halfway between us, like I'd been placed there and he was trying not to see me.

My shoulder throbbed under the bandage. The nightgown had slipped a little again and I pulled it straight with my good hand. Across the foyer, under the chandelier, my mother had a hold of my father's sleeve. She wasn't shouting anymore.

That was worse.

I could hear her voice low and tight. She'd pulled him just out of the guards' hearing, into that bright pool of light under the crystal. Her pearls caught the light every time she turned her head. Her brooch — that deep green stone she'd worn since I was small — sat pinned high on her collar and it shook when she breathed.

"You left her by the fire like luggage," she said to him.

My father's voice was lower. Flat. "She's not going anywhere. Not now."

"You think locking doors fixes anything," she said. "You think if you put a bandage on it and drag her down a hall, it goes away."

He made a short sound, irritated. "Don't start your stories again."

"It's not a story." Her fingers went to the brooch without thinking, touching the edge of it. "This was my grandmother's. She wore it for the same reason. It was a ward. Not jewelry. You laughed then too."

I shifted my weight and the guard glanced at me, then away. The marble was cold through my bare feet.

My father stared at the stone in her hand. "A ward against what? A cold? You want her docile, that's your ward. A proper house, a proper name."

"Against this," she snapped, and then caught herself and lowered her voice again. I had to strain to hear. "Against forcing a bond that isn't yours to give. You push her toward a man she wasn't marked for and it'll backfire. It always backfires. The mark doesn't obey you."

The word didn't make sense at first.

Mark. I thought she meant the bandage, the claw marks underneath it. My hand went to my shoulder without thinking. Then she said it again, clearer.

"You can't cage a lycan bond. If he's her lycan and you tie her to someone else, you will break her. Or he'll come through the walls to get to her."

My breath stopped.

Lycan.

I'd never heard her say that word before. Not in prayer, not in warning, not when I was a kid asking why she never let me play past the tree line behind the house. The way she said it wasn't like folklore. It was like a name for something that left my shoulder bleeding and made a strange man's wrist burn in the back of a car miles away.

My father laughed, but it wasn't amused. "Lycan. Christ. You sound like your mother. There are no wolves in this neighborhood, Margaret. There are contracts. There are obligations. She had an incident. She fell. She got scratched."

"Those weren't scratches from a fall," my mother said. Her voice cracked. "Look at her. Look at what happened in the car. You felt that light. I saw your face."

"I saw a trick of the light," he said.

"You saw it transfer," she said. "I felt it when my cousin went through it. That golden branch on the wrist — it knows. You pull her now and it will only pull harder on the other end."

I pressed my back against the mantel. The stone dug into my shoulder blade, right under the bandage, and I bit my lip so I wouldn't make a sound. My wrist — the left one, the one that had burned in the dream of the flash — felt suddenly warm. Not glowing, not yet. Just warm, like blood coming to the surface.

I knew I should have said something. Should have stepped into that light and said I heard her, that I knew something else was happening to me, that I wasn't just scratched.

But my father turned his head then and looked straight at me. His eyes were gray and steady and they told me exactly what would happen if I spoke. Another grip on my arm. Another hallway. A lock clicking.

So I looked down. I let my hair fall forward. I made my breathing shallow and small, like I was trying not to cry and failing. It's easy to look broken when you are.

My mother saw me looking. Her mouth moved — just a little — like she wanted me to stay quiet too. Not to protect him. To protect me.

"We're done," my father said to her. He didn't touch her brooch. He touched her elbow and moved her aside. Then he raised his voice, not loud, but enough to carry off the marble. "James. Lock the French doors. And tell security no one in or out the front without my say. Not her, not anyone."

The guard by the fireplace straightened. Another man appeared from the hall I'd been dragged through, already turning a key.

My mother reached for me then, but my father stepped between us. "You can sit with her after dinner," he said. "Right now she needs to rest."

She didn't argue again. Not out loud. Her hand brushed my arm as she passed — just the tips of her fingers — and I felt the cold edge of that emerald brooch for half a second against my skin.

He left two men at the foyer doors and one at the base of the stairs. The chandelier kept throwing light everywhere, so bright there was nowhere to hide. I stayed by the fireplace and kept my eyes on the floor and kept that new word tucked behind my teeth.