Mark of Sin: Bound to the Cruel Alpha

A chair. A simple wooden chair.

He sat upon it, swathed on all sides by a deafening silence that pressed hard against his eardrums, seeped beneath his skin, and settled behind his ribs. It sat there like a heavy lead weight, so dense it felt as though his ribcage might snap under the crushing pressure.

A silence unbroken even by a breath. His own breathing remained even, measured—as if nothing had happened, as if the world hadn’t ceased to exist hours ago when he caught her final, fading exhale. But her breath... was gone.

Gone.

Never to return.

She lay on the examination table before him.

His girl.

He clamped his palm over her hand with such fierce, crushing force that his own joints throbbed and his fingers grew numb. Yet loosening his grip felt akin to casting her into oblivion forever—an admission that it was over.

This was the end.

Nothing could ever be undone.

He couldn’t do it. He didn’t dare. Even the mere thought triggered a wild, primal panic that constricted his throat, choking the air right out of him.

Because of it, a pathetic, frantic thought kept looping in his mind: Was that her fingers twitching against his palm? A faint, dying pulse...

I’m here, I’m still here... don’t let go of me, okay?

Or was he trembling so violently that he was shaking her breathless, weightless body—a body that seemed even smaller, even more fragile in death?

He looked down at their joined hands. At his own—large, coarse, scarred, his knuckles turned stark white under the strain. And at hers—small, delicate, with long, slender fingers that had once traced his skin, leaving trails of fire in their wake.

Now they were cold. Waxy. Lifeless.

His girl...

His vision, blurred with unshed tears that seared his eyes without falling—because there was no time to weep, and no reason to—drifted downward toward her wrist. Toward the mark.

Their shared bond mark, branded into flesh by fate itself so they would be bound forever, no matter what, against the entire world.

He remembered the day he had decided to cover the original tattoo. He had inked it in honor of his mother, and when that exact design appeared on Karina’s skin, it had nearly made him sick.

When Karina died, he had felt absolutely nothing. He knew he shouldn’t have been so cold-hearted, but seeing that mark on her had provoked only revulsion and fury. He had never, ever wanted a true mate of his own.

He knew all too well how the mate-bond could break a male. But with Lang, everything had been different... So overwhelmingly different that he had lost himself.

He hadn’t recognized the person he had become. It was as though he were under a spell. He hadn’t truly believed it until the very end... And now look at the result. He had broken his own girl.

A blind fool. He hadn’t understood. He hadn’t seen the truth. He had allowed them to twist his mind. Allowed them to poison him... Family? Let them all burn in hell. He should have trusted his instincts instead of them.

Now the mark flaked away like ash. It would remain like this forever—a monument to the two women life had so cruelly stolen from him.

His mother, who had shielded his body with her own during the ambush.

And his true mate, whom he had failed to protect.

It was all his fault. Entirely his fault.

The mark was charred. Not completely, but scarred and fractured—a ruined rose with burnt petals. An ugly, black scar occupying the space where others carried their happiness... a happiness that had probably never truly existed for them, because he hadn’t trusted her. He hadn’t trusted anyone.

He had believed it was impossible... That it couldn’t be... Back then, he had let go of her hand. Now, he couldn’t bring himself to release it.

He looked down at his own wrist, where the leather band still hung. Charred and blackened, as if held directly over an open flame. The skin beneath was dark, webbed with cracks. Dead. His mark had also crumbled, turning to grime, to ash.

To nothing.

Even now, amidst this nightmare, they were identical. Equally shattered. Equally dead.

With a wild, guttural roar that tore from his chest against his own will, he ripped the leather band from his wrist. He yanked it so violently that the burnt skin peeled away, leaving a raw, bloody track behind. He hurled the cuff into the corner, listening to the dull thud as it struck the wall and hit the floor.

To hell with it all!

To hell with these symbols, these vows that had turned out to be nothing more than dust and empty noise!

He pressed his fingers back into her cold hand, forcing his raw, bleeding wound against hers—right where the bond mark had once rested. Mark to mark. Blood to blood. The way it should have been from the very beginning.

Nothing.

No spark of light, no surge of warmth to flow between them and rebind their souls. No forgiveness—the very thing he so desperately sought, though he didn’t even know if he was begging for her forgiveness or his own.

Only darkness.

Only an all-consuming, freezing void that devoured him from the inside out, corroding him like acid and leaving behind a black, burnt crater.

In his mind, like a cruel taunt from fate itself, the words of some ancient thinker resurfaced—words he had read long ago and forgotten, only for them to return now, driving into his skull like a blade: "As long as you breathe, everything can still be fixed."

He was breathing.

She was not.

What could possibly be fixed now? What?!

He had never asked the Goddess for anything. Not a single thing.

But now he was ready to beg.

One chance... Just one single chance.

For them.

For her...

So she could live...

So she could breathe...

So she could argue, scream, fight, laugh, and smile... Anything.

So she wouldn’t leave him to drown in this deafening silence. Just a few beats of her heart...

One chance to fix it all...

But... how could anything be fixed when she was dead? When he was too late? When the last words he had ever spoken to her were cruel and laced with venom—when he had watched her tears fall and felt a sick satisfaction, wanting her to bleed the way he had bled?

The only thing left to pray for now...

Was to lay his head down upon her cold, still abdomen—which no longer rose or fell with breath—hand someone a sledgehammer, and wait for the blow to fall.

To crush his skull and end it all.

To shatter the atlas bone that held his skull to his spine—to finally halt this inner hell, this agony consuming him alive.

To follow her.

Yet his body betrayed him, stubbornly continuing to breathe. His heart beat on, his lungs filled with air, as if mocking him and his desperate desire to simply cease to exist.

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