BLACK

(20) Uncharted

EDITED

                It wasn't shock I desired, and I wasn't surprised I didn't receive, but perhaps the small falling of her smug lips had brought the satisfaction upon me. Cassandria didn't quiver; she was uncharted, who did she have to bow down to? Still, she spoke.

"Noire," Very slowly. "Vierr."

Not once did I blink to remove my eyes from her battered skin. Faintly, her scent was familiar, and her dusted purple skin was befitting.

"Can't say I ever thought I'd see you again." Her neck tilts, perhaps to break tension. "At least, not alive."

The pressure of Black against my side is dulling, it took too much strength to shove him the inch he would give, and then ache as he sunk back into me. The stare into Cassandria's crystal eyes hold the cruelty I expected. "If it's no trouble," I raise my voice above the heavy breathing of the rogues. In the distance, one by one, their skin shriveled back until they were bare human bodies. Each wanted a glimpse at their should-be, but couldn't Luna. "I'd like to pass through this land, unharmed."

The glint in her eyes held recognition, as well as all of the surrounding shifters. There couldn't be more than a low teen amount of them, but twice the eyes was unsettling. Of course they knew me, even in the middle of the valleys shifter news would travel. I had never spent any time with these rogues, but I knew the explanation of uncharted. They roamed freely, unlike a pack. Where barriers were not, they were. The iconic was to prevent more packs from digging themselves out of the dirt. Uncharted was meant to take up all of the land, and then, slowly close in.

"Just passing through?" There's no kindness, or remorse, over her features.

She was as stone cold as her brother. Both shared the forests love for green, both had skin like the sun. Yet one was alive, one was not. Calder was dead within the hour I had met him, but someone had to deliver the news. And thus I met Cassandria for the very first time.

"If it's no trouble," I restate calmly, mild winds picking up my unruly black hair.

My eyes focused on the young woman I had never been allowed to get to know. The sister of Calder, the heir to his hierarchy. The sister-in-mate I had been deprived of. There was a time in my life I was whole, a time the burning flame within me had been conquered with the right amount of water. In two rows of teeth, I wore that water in a halo of scars on my neck. Where my collarbone and shoulder met, came the greatest gain, and loss, of my life. I don't bear the mark of Calder any more, It was shredded from my skin after his death. Like a searing hot burn that would linger and relinquish, it tore down my throat and into the pit of my stomach. Like waves of an angry storm at sea, but in orange flickers with red coals. His death caused me so much grief, weeks followed that I refused to leave my bed, or couldn't find the will to speak.

After that, Aris made me swear up and down to never let another mate mark me again. The claim of a shifter intensified a completed bond beyond capacity, like the smallest knot over the thinnest string. So when I lost his seal, and so violently, it was a miracle that I started to get out of my bed and move on. I may have survived being stripped of a mark once, but I was guaranteed I wouldn't survive a second.

So, despite all of my mates whines, and complaints, I never wore any shifter's claim again. And though I may not bear the mark of Calder now, they still knew me. It was hard to forget a seventeen year old girl with bloodshot eyes, bloody hands, and a mangled Aris holding me back.