Marked (The Coldest Fae Book 3) by Katerina Martinez (great novels of all time .txt) 📕

a second I thought I was dreaming. I couldn’t recognize the tent, the camp, or even Lora, but she was rushing me out like the place was on fire.

Outside, the whole camp was watching as I was marched into the space in front of the main tent. Dawn had broken, the air was crisp and cool, and the morning brightness broke into streaks as it touched the jagged edges of the snowy peaks all around the village. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but Mel and Mira had both been brought out of their tents too.

“Oh shit,” Gullie said from inside my hair, “They’re gonna kill us.”

“No, they’re not,” I said. “Are they?”

“I don’t know, but these people look serious as all hell. What did you do?!”

“Nothing! I just slept.”

“Quiet,” Lora prodded me in the back. “Address only the Alpha.”

As I reached the clearing in front of the main tent, I found Ashera and Toross both waiting for me, as well as several of the other faces I’d come to know, like Praxis and Jaleem. There were so many of them here, I wasn’t sure what was going on, but whatever was about to happen, it was going to be a spectacle.

Thinking about it that way made it less surprising to see so many fae out here. Whether they were castle fae or moon children, the love of a good show really was universal. Even I could understand I was probably the most entertaining thing to have happened to this camp in a while, at least.

“Here,” Lora said, grabbing my shoulder once I’d reached the center of the space around which all the fae were assembled.

I stopped and looked around. I’d been given a new shirt to wear, so at least I wasn’t mostly naked, which would’ve been a literal nightmare. I couldn’t find the Prince, though. Maybe he was still too injured to stand, or maybe he hadn’t been allowed out here. Quietly, I waited for someone to speak.

Ashera was the one who spoke first. “Today we find out who you really are,” she said.

Good luck. Even I don’t know that. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Last night you demonstrated to me you could change your shape… but you were not very good.”

“It was my first time.”

“There are children who can shapeshift better than you.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“You are bad at it.”

“Alright,” I groaned, “I get it. Move on.”

Another pause. “The white wolf is said to be our savior, the one who will help us take back what was stolen from us, but to do that she must be a warrior without peer. The best among us. Are you the best of us?”

I scanned the crowd. “I… no. I’m not.”

“This must change. The best way to learn how to swim is to be thrown into the deep end of the icy lake. If you do not swim to the shore fast enough, you will freeze and die.”

“Wait, am I being thrown into a lake?”

“No…” she turned her head to the side and looked at Jaleem. “Yours will be the honor of doing battle with the white wolf,” she said.

Jaleem nodded, turned to look at me, and took a few steps away from the crowd and into the center of the clearing that had been made for us. He looked eager. Happy, in fact. Maybe even a little hungry. I remembered what the Prince had said about these people being cannibals, and the look on this man’s face supported the theory, but it was probably just a theory.

He wasn’t going to kill and eat me.

Right?

Already I could feel my muscles tightening. My heart started pounding hard inside of my chest, and in my mouth, my teeth were beginning to throb and ache. “Not this again,” I said. “I already caught him last night.”

“Do not argue this,” Ashera said, “Defend yourself. He will not stop until you are dead.”

Jaleem’s hungry smile widened. “Gullie, go!” I yelled, just as the fae threw himself to the ground. Donning his wolf form in a flash, he launched himself toward me with his teeth bared. I backed up a step, then another, and another, my mind racing, my body tingling. I still wasn’t totally sure how to channel my inner wolf, or whatever. It was supposed to be instinct.

So, instead of backing up any further, I planted my foot firmly in the ground and used it to spring toward him with my hands outstretched. By the time our bodies collided, we were both wolves, and it couldn’t have been weirder.

As a wolf, I was easily two times my original size, and way stronger than I was used to. The entire world opened up to me in a barrage of smells, and sounds, and sights. My senses weren’t just sharper; I developed totally new ones when I transformed. And even though my mind had the capacity to process them all, I wasn’t totally sure I understood any of them yet.

Beating Jaleem to the ground wasn’t difficult once I’d found my footing. The smaller wolf scrambled away from me, circled around, and snarled. I paced around him, matching his footing, trying to keep him away from me. I could feel him, understand him, he wanted to kill me; not because he was angry at me, but because his Alpha had told him to.

I lowered my eyes and growled at him, trying to intimidate him, but it didn’t work. He threw himself at me again, taking my snarl as an invitation to fight. This time, I tried to dodge out of his way, but he was faster than I was, and he sank his teeth into my throat. I shook him off, batting him away with one paw and then snapping at him with my own jaws, but he got away, and I was bleeding.

The injury wasn’t bad. I knew it wasn’t. And once I started focusing on it, concentrating, I could feel it starting to knit and close. But this was the way Jaleem fought. He nipped and snapped