Marked While We Slept

The dream always started the same way.

Riley Merritt lay in her narrow bed, the thin blanket pulled up to her chin against the mountain cold that seeped through the cracks in the cabin walls. In the dream, she was aware of being asleep, aware of the moonlight streaming through her small window, aware of the sound of her father’s snoring from the main room.

Then the shadows in the corner of her room began to move.

She tried to sit up, tried to scream, but her body wouldn’t obey. Sleep paralysis, some distant part of her mind whispered. Just a nightmare. But it felt so real. The shadow detached itself from the wall, taking the rough shape of a man—tall, broad-shouldered, moving with a predator’s grace.

The shadow man crossed her room in silence, and Riley’s heart hammered against her ribs. She could feel her wolf stirring somewhere deep inside her, still dormant, still months or maybe years away from emerging, but aware in a way it had never been before.

When the shadow reached her bedside, it paused. Riley still couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, but she could feel. The air around her grew thick with a scent she couldn’t quite identify—pine and winter storms and something wild and protective and utterly foreign to this pack.

The shadow man reached out, and she felt cool fingers brush against the curve where her neck met her shoulder. The touch sent electricity racing through her veins, equal parts terror and something else, something that made her dormant wolf keen with confusion.

Then came the pain.

White-hot and searing, like teeth sinking into her flesh, marking her, claiming her. Riley wanted to scream but couldn’t. She wanted to fight but was frozen. The pain blossomed across her shoulder and neck, spreading like wildfire, and beneath it came something else—a bond snapping into place, invisible threads connecting her to this stranger made of shadows and moonlight.

I’m sorry, a voice whispered in her mind, deep and rough and filled with genuine regret. I’m so sorry. But this is the only way to protect you.

Then the shadow was retreating, dissolving back into the darkness, and Riley felt herself sinking deeper into sleep, into dreams that felt less real than what had just happened, into a darkness that swallowed everything.

Riley woke to screaming.

She bolted upright in bed, her heart racing, disoriented and confused. For a moment she thought the shadow man had been real, that he was still in her room, but no—her room was empty save for her rickety furniture and the pale dawn light creeping through her window.

The screaming was coming from outside.

Riley threw off her blanket and immediately gasped. Her shoulder burned. She pressed her hand against it and felt raised skin, tender and hot to the touch. With trembling fingers, she pulled down the collar of her nightshirt and twisted to see her reflection in the small, cracked mirror on her wall.

A mate mark.

Fresh, red and angry-looking, but unmistakable. The pattern of teeth marks formed a crescent on the junction of her neck and shoulder, the universal sign that she belonged to someone, that she was claimed, that she was mated.

“No,” Riley whispered. “No, no, no.”

She was only fourteen. She didn’t even have her wolf yet. And she had been in her bed all night—she was sure of it. The shadow man had been a dream. He had to have been a dream.

But mate marks didn’t appear from dreams.

The screaming outside intensified, joined by more voices. Riley heard her father’s heavy footsteps, heard him cursing, heard the front door slam open. She forced herself to move, to pull on her worn jeans and a shirt with a high collar, to braid her dark hair with shaking hands.

When she emerged from her room, her father was gone. The cabin was empty. Riley wrapped her arms around herself and stepped outside into chaos.

The pack grounds were in an uproar. Women and girls were stumbling out of cabins, some crying, some looking shell-shocked. Mothers were shouting. Fathers were arguing. And the pack leadership—Alpha Garrett and his Beta and enforcers—were storming through the compound with fury written across their faces.

Riley spotted Mara Chen, sixteen and one of the few people who had ever been kind to her, standing outside her family’s cabin with her hand pressed to her neck. Their eyes met across the compound, and Riley saw her own shock and fear reflected back at her.

“Riley!” Her father appeared beside her, his face pale. Omega wolves weren’t common in any pack, and her father had always been gentle, submissive, more comfortable following than leading. But now he looked terrified. “Let me see.”

Riley pulled down her collar. Her father’s face went even paler.

“Who?” he demanded. “Who was it? Did you see him?”

“I—I was asleep, Papa. I had a dream, but—”

“A dream?” Her father’s voice cracked. “Riley, mate marks don’t come from dreams!”

“I know that!” Riley’s eyes burned with tears. “But I was asleep! I swear I was asleep! There was no one—”

“ALL UNMATED FEMALES TO THE SQUARE. NOW!”

Alpha Garrett’s voice boomed across the compound, enhanced by his Alpha command. Riley felt it like a physical push, compelling her forward. Her father grabbed her arm, but she was already moving, unable to resist the command.

The square was the central gathering place of their pack—a cleared area of hard-packed dirt surrounded by the main cabins. Riley joined the growing crowd of women and girls, all of them looking terrified, many with fresh mate marks visible on their necks and shoulders.

Riley did a quick count. Twenty-three. Twenty-three marked females, ranging from girls as young as twelve to women in their thirties. The entire unmated female population of the pack.

Alpha Garrett stood on the raised platform usually reserved for pack meetings and executions. He was a massive man, his wolf a dominant Alpha that made the air around him feel heavy and oppressive. His face was mottled red with rage.

“Who was it?” he snarled, his eyes raking over them. “Which one of you brought males into this pack? Which one of you invited this?”

Silence. Terrified, trembling silence.

“ANSWER ME!”

Riley flinched. Beside her, a girl named Sophie started crying. She was only twelve, small and fragile-looking, and she looked like she might faint.

“Alpha,” one of the women—Jessica, twenty-eight and usually defiant—spoke up with a shaking voice. “We don’t know. We were all asleep. We didn’t invite anyone. We didn’t—”

“LIES!” Beta Marcus stepped forward, his face twisted with fury. “Mate marks don’t appear from thin air! Someone had to apply them. Someone had to bite you.”

“We’re telling the truth,” Mara Chen said, her voice stronger than Jessica’s but still afraid. “We were all asleep. We all had dreams—”

“Dreams?” Alpha Garrett laughed, the sound cold and cruel. “You expect us to believe that phantom men marked all of you in your sleep?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Mara said, “but I know I didn’t invite anyone. I know I was in my bed all night. My parents were right outside my door—ask them.”

Several fathers in the crowd called out confirmation, but Alpha Garrett silenced them with a look.

“The scents,” Riley whispered to Mara. “Can they smell who marked us?”

Mara shook her head slightly. “I don’t recognize mine. It’s not anyone from the pack.”

Alpha Garrett was conferring with Beta Marcus and the enforcers. Riley strained to hear, catching fragments: “—outside wolves—” “—invasion—” “—can’t track the scents—” “—already gone—”

Finally, Alpha Garrett turned back to them, and the look on his face made Riley’s blood run cold.

“You are all contaminated,” he said flatly. “Marked by unknown males, possibly from rival packs, possibly as an act of war. Until we determine what happened and why, you are all considered security risks.”

“Security risks?” Jessica’s voice rose. “We’re the victims here! We were attacked in our sleep!”

“You are marked property that belongs to males outside this pack,” Alpha Garrett said. “That makes you compromised. You will be confined to the work camps. You will have no contact with the rest of the pack. You will be monitored at all times. And if we find evidence that any of you conspired in this—” His smile was vicious. “—there will be consequences.”

The crowd erupted. Parents shouted protests. The marked women cried out in dismay. Riley felt like the ground was tilting beneath her feet.

“Papa!” she called out, searching the crowd for her father.

But the enforcers were already moving forward, separating the marked women from their families, herding them toward the eastern edge of the compound where the work camps were located—crude barracks used for punishment details and the pack’s most brutal labor.

Riley caught sight of her father, tears streaming down his face, being held back by two pack males. He was an Omega; he had no power here, no authority to protect her.

“It’s okay, Papa!” Riley called out, trying to sound brave even though she was terrified. “It’s okay!”

But it wasn’t okay.

As the enforcers marched them toward the work camps, Riley looked back at the pack grounds one last time. She saw the other pack members watching with a mixture of pity and relief that it wasn’t them. She saw the Alpha’s cold satisfaction. She saw her father collapse to his knees.

And she thought of Cruz, her older brother who had left for Alpha college two years ago. Cruz, who had promised to come back and make things better. Cruz, who sent secret letters telling her to be strong, to survive, that he had a plan.

Is this your plan, Cruz? Riley thought, her hand pressed to the burning mark on her shoulder. Did you do this?

The shadow man’s voice echoed in her memory: I’m so sorry. But this is the only way to protect you.

Protection. This was supposed to be protection.

Riley looked around at the twenty-two other women and girls being marched toward imprisonment, toward punishment for something they didn’t do, toward a fate none of them had chosen.

If this was protection, she thought, what would destruction look like?

The work camp gates closed behind them with a sound like thunder, and Riley’s new life began.