The Mark of Fate: Book 3 of The Marked series by Ford, Rinna (romantic love story reading .TXT) 📕

“I saw you leave this morning,” he began and shifted from one foot to the other, “and I just wanted to talk to you. I’m sorry if I scared you…”

“You didn’t scare me,” I retorted, “I’m just not sure I like you, and you following me like a creeper in the night to an abandoned beach doesn’t help your case. What the fuck do you want?”

He looked down at the sand in between us and huffed out a non humorous laugh. His smile stayed in place a little too long, a little too awkwardly before it fell revealing a much more nervous caster.

“I, I just want to be your friend. I want to help. I know who you are and what you’re meant to do and I… I want to be a part of that. I swear, that’s all.”

He held up his hands in surrender and tilted his face down in submission. I studied him for almost a minute but his posture didn’t waver. I didn’t see or feel even a hint of dishonesty coming from him.

“Following a woman all by herself out in the middle of nowhere to ask for her friendship is a really bad idea. You’re lucky I didn’t murder you on the spot.”

“I know, I can see that now. I’m sorry for following you and sneaking up on you.” His face tinged pink from embarrassment. “I saw you without one of your mates for the first time ever and I took a chance. I should have thought about it a little more before doing that.”

“Yes, you should have.”

I relaxed a little bit more at his boyish grin, and felt my attraction to him begin to build. I couldn’t tell if it was his natural charm or if he was weaving another spell; I couldn’t smell anything different with the wind blowing in the opposite direction, but I didn’t like it. I also remembered my promise to Matias and Xander.

“I need to get going,” I said to him with a forced smile.

“Wait!” Alec called out, throwing his hands out. “I just need to know one thing.”

I stopped moving and waited for him to ask his question.

“When you attacked me earlier, why didn’t you use magic? I could see your vampire and shifter sides, but you never call on your caster side. Why?

My nostrils flared, knowing it was a touchy subject. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I knew I needed to answer him with the lie that had already been spread around if I wanted to keep my secret.

“It’s gone,” I replied, looking him straight in the eye. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors. Well, they’re true… mostly true anyway. We don’t know for sure how or why, but our guess is that when I bonded with Matias, my caster side was smothered by my shifter and vampire sides to the point that it went away entirely. I didn’t have my caster mate to boost my magic so it just… died. There’s no trace of it left.”

“None?” He didn’t seem to believe me.

I shook my head. “You’re a caster. Can’t you detect even the smallest hint of magic? I know my uncle can.”

I issued the statement as a challenge, and I knew that was exactly how he took it.

Alec reached his right hand toward me. “May I?” he asked. He wanted to touch my skin in an attempt to feel for my magic.

I hesitated, but gave in and reached my opposite arm toward him. He took it gently, rubbing his thumb in a circular motion across the delicate skin of my inner forearm. Alec lowered his head as if he were concentrating. His jaw clenched and the circles on my skin became slower and slower until he stopped making them, but didn’t release me.

“I can’t believe it. Your magic really is gone, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t lying,” I said and tried to pull my arm free, but Alec tightened his grip and tugged me closer.

I reached inward for Soliel and my vampire, sensing that something was very wrong with the situation after all, but instead of finding the strength I needed to break free, it seemed my body was growing weaker by the second. The energy my body had was slowly draining as if a battery was wearing down.

I screamed inward for my predators to help but there was no reaching Soliel. She was nowhere to be found, hidden away in some deep dark part of my psyche I couldn’t reach. It felt exactly like what it felt to have my dragon suppressed when Di turned me.

Darting my eyes toward Alec’s, I saw that he was the one doing it to me, and doing it on purpose, leaving me partially defenseless. His knowing smirk morphed into a sadistic grin and I knew I was in trouble. My vampire tried to spring forward but my body became too heavy to stand and I fell to my knees. I hissed and scratched at his hand, unable to do the damage I intended because I was getting dramatically weaker with every attempt I made to break free.

“Behave,” he chuckled darkly and dug his fingers into my skin even harder, making my mouth open in a silent scream.

With his free hand, Alec pulled out something that looked like a necklace and snapped it around my neck, making my vampire recoil until I couldn’t feel that part of me either.

I was as helpless as a human.

“You know, you could have made this more of a challenge for me, Emelia,” Alec mocked, releasing my arm and letting me fall to the sand.

I tried to get up, to attack, to run away, to do anything, but every ounce of energy seemed to have been sucked out of me. I could barely even move on the ground.

“I was promised a challenge,” he continued and started circling me slowly. “It was the only reason I took the job, really. How disappointing. I really thought I’d never get you away