Chapter 776

"No, I think you are, I just..." she shrugs, looking down, smoothing and hand down over the fabric covering his chest. "I just love you a lot and you keep talking about marriage and rings - but that's all very...human, you know? And I'm a wolf."

He smiles a little, honestly relieved.

"Do you want my mark?"

She looks back up at him through her lashes, blushing, because - well, it's ridiculous, right? They've been dating for like a couple of weeks at best - how can she want it like this, this fast, when there's no bond - But she's sure - absolutely sure even if her wolf is not, and her wolf is coming around to the idea, honestly, that maybe it's just his half human heritage, that the bond will come and they can go and ask the Goddess what's up when this has all settled down.

Because everything is else is so real, and so vivid. In her heart she knows it's him, knows it has to be. How...how could it be anyone else?

"Yes, Jess," she whispers, smiling a little, laughing. "Yes, I want it - but -"

He snarls, laughing too, rolling her over in the bed, reaching for her shirt buttons. "Cool, let's do it now -" "Jesse!" She bursts out laughing.

"I'm serious, I've got like fifteen minutes, and it's just a little bite - I can do that in four seconds -"

She laughs harder now, knowing that he's not completely serious, even if...well, if she agreed to it right now that it might happen. Both of them - she knows he feels precisely the same - they're both just...a little swept away by each other. But Daphne just shakes her head, taking his handsome face between her palms, the aftershock of laughter running through her.

"No, Jess," she says with a happy sigh. "You know I want it to be right. And you do too. Not on a sewing break in the few minutes before I send you away to war, of all things."

"But it's settled," he says, looking at her quite seriously, all the love in his heart clear on his face. "We'll make some time in the upcoming weeks to go away, be alone. And we'll do it both ways. A mark and a ring."

"A mark and a ring," she says, smiling a little, absolutely perfectly happy. And then she leans in, pressing her mouth to his, closing her eyes and kissing him with everything she's got. They lose themselves to each other for a long few moments, burying their grief, their worries about family, their anxieties about war in their mutual happiness which right now feels strong enough to sweep through the entire world and make everything right.

Which is why neither of them notice as the room slowly fills with smoke.

Smoke, or shadow, that seeps in like a rage, pulsing and growing and flickering with a horrible blue light. And at the center of it all a very small form made of darkness itself, her breath heaving in her chest. Mittens gives a horrible little mew of fear just a moment before the darkness moves.

"Mine," the darkness snarls, storming forward, reaching out a claw-tipped hand to grab at Daphne's shoulder and haul her back, pulling her away from Jesse.

Daphne gasps and then screams at the form before her, a tiny female form with dark pits for eyes, a hole from her mouth from which horror and shadows fall with every breath, every word. "He. Is. Mine."

The darkness slashes its claws once across Daphne's face, leaving three long streaks of blood. She screams as Jesse roars leaping for the girl at the center of the darkness, grabbing her neck in his hand. noveldrama

But the girl made of darkness just smiles at him, stepping into his rage and fear and anger like an

embrace, even has he tightens the hand around her neck.

"Mine," she says again, smiling up at him like he's perfect as Daphne screams in horror and fear and pain. "You're mine. Not hers. Mine!"

And then she wraps her arms around him, and vanishes away, taking smoke and boy with her. Silence.

It echoes in the room alongside Daphne's panting breath.

Quite suddenly the room is precisely how it was not thirty seconds before, calm and quiet.

Except Daphne's face stings with pain. And she trembles, looking around frantically for Jesse, raising a shaking hand to her cheek. Her fingertips come away red with blood but she can't even think about it because Jesse -

He's not here -

He's gone - completely gone - without a trace -

Shaking now, Daphne runs her eyes again around the room because he - he can't just be gone - he has to be here.

But somehow, impossible as it is, she's wrong.

Daphne is alone in the room now. Alone with a little cat made of shadow, who stares at her with wide, shocked round eyes.

Mittens and Daphne stare at each other for a horrified moment before Daphne snatches the tiny cat from the headboard and dashes for the door, hauling it open and shouting frantically for Rafe and Ari and Jackson and Ben as she sprints through the halls of the Castle.