by Cara Wylde
Cara Wylde and Dahlia Briar
Marked
Primal Obsessions
Copyright © 2020 by Cara Wylde and Dahlia Briar
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
Cover art by Emma Griffin. Cover is for illustrative purposes only.
First edition
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Contents
Marked
1. Rosalie
2. Brooks
3. Rosalie
4. Lincoln
5. Colt
6. Rosalie
7. Brooks
8. Lincoln
9. Rosalie
10. Colt
11. Brooks
12. Rosalie
13. Colt
14. Rosalie
15. Lincoln
16. Colt
17. Rosalie
18. Brooks
19. Colt
20. Rosalie
21. Brooks
About the Author
Also by Cara Wylde and Dahlia Briar
Marked
My name is Rosalie, and I’m on the run. If my ex-husband catches me, he will kill me.
One car accident and one stolen child later, I find myself in a nightmare worse than my failed marriage. I should be dead for what I did, but the three beasts spare my life so I can nurse their orphan cub.
Brooks, Lincoln, and Colt. They are half men, half bears, and they’re as cruel as they come. They imprison me, humiliate me, and use me in twisted ways. I’m reduced to being a slave, an object to be manipulated for their own amusement.
They hate me, yet in their arms, I feel safer than I’ve ever felt before.
Authors’ Note: This is a full, standalone dark romance story with no cliffhangers, and a happily-ever-after. Please be advised that it may contain situations that are triggering to some, profanity, and a lot of steam.
One
Rosalie
“You can do this, Rosalie!”
I’d been giving myself pep talks all throughout the night and the early morning. Now, after Jack, my husband, had left for work, I needed to set my plan into motion. I had made a decision and I would stick to it. I would not chicken out again.
“Yes, Rosalie? You got this, girl. No more fear.”
I got up from the bed a good five minutes after I’d heard his car in the driveway getting further and further away. I reached under the bed with my right hand and pulled the small Ziploc bags.
Today was the day I was leaving him. Forever.
Today was the day I was leaving him, my house, my youthful hopes, my past, but most importantly, my pain behind. I cradled my left arm to my chest.
Last night he’d come home angry again. I didn’t even know what lesson he was supposedly teaching me, but that didn’t matter. I’d learned my lessons. Staying here meant pain and suffering, and five years of abuse was enough.
I opened the door to our walk-in closet, dragged my backpack out from underneath the old crap I had hidden it under, and started filling it with the few things I wanted to bring with me into my new life – mostly clothes, bare necessities, hygiene items, but also photo albums from happier days. Or just photos. I’d married Jack when I was nineteen and madly in love, and I’d thought the sun revolved around him. I’d been so happy and woefully naïve. Since then, I’d realized my mistake. Everything had to be for him and about him, and God forbid I disobeyed his orders.
But not anymore.
No more.
No more pain, no more beatings.
“You can do this, Rosalie!”
I went into the kitchen and threw in some fruit, biscuits, dry and canned food into my bag. Then I retrieved my cash stash from the cereal box, ignoring the two credit cards I had, which were so easily traceable.
He never ate cereal in the morning, or ever, really, which made the unassuming cardboard box the best hiding place in the whole house. Because he rummaged, oh, how he rummaged, always fearful I was hiding things from him. He meant affairs, but I’d never even looked at another man.
I sighed and glanced around one last time. The days we’d spent together here, figuring out how to decorate the space, where to put more recessed lighting, the money we saved together for better furniture and appliances… I was running away and leaving everything to the bastard who ruined… well… everything.
I was getting worked up again, but that was fine. It was better to get angry and bitter than afraid and whimpering again. I did not want to back out now. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I dragged the heavy backpack behind me, locked my front door for the last time, took a deep breath, then glanced around one last time at the quiet, still sleepy neighborhood, full of people who pretended to be my friends, but gossiped about me and Jack behind our backs, never helping, never meddling. I would not be missing them.
Truly no one was out there. No early bird neighbors jogging who could easily tell on me, none of Jack’s brute friends somehow just dropping by, looking for him, even though they full well knew he was at work.
We lived in a small, quiet neighborhood, and I would have thought we didn’t belong, but the place wasn’t one where nice and kind people lived, so Jack did just fine.
I was finally going to be free!
After half an hour of walking and thankfully only bumping into a jogger or two, I reached my first destination: Walmart. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could run away on foot, and I didn’t want to leave a paper trail for Jack to follow, or to learn my destination from a bus terminal clerk, so I was going to do something insane and wild, and maybe stupid, but I was out of options.
I was going to steal a car.
I raised my head up high and walked around the parking lot as if I was just getting back to my car, sneaking glances left and right, looking for that one distracted person who was busy loading up groceries.
Finally, I found my opportunity. An old lady was struggling with her toilet paper haul. Was I really going to steal an old lady’s car? I looked around again, but everyone else had more sense than this woman, whose driver seat window was lowered and whose keys were in the ignition, marking two out of three things one should never do if they cared for their car.
“Shit, Rosalie, this is a new low!”
It was, but it also was my way out. She was an old lady, someone was surely going to help. I maintained a casual pace right until I was between this blue Chrysler and a black minivan, then rushed to throw the too heavy backpack onto the passenger seat. I honked the horn once, which prompted the lady to move away and check what the heck was going on. Her stepping aside was my cue to hit the pedals and get lost.
I knew I was going above the speed limit, but it felt as if my body was frozen. Frozen in fear. The only thing I could still control were my eyes, which I kept darting t
o look in the rearview mirror, to see if anyone was following me.
Once or twice, I thought I could see Jack’s blue Sedan tailing me, but every time I blinked back the tears that image kept bringing to the surface and had another look, the Sedan became a Buick, or Chevrolet, or any other car, or simply changed color.
I needed to get a grip. I was driving a stolen car. If anyone was to be tailing me, it would be a police car. I needed to get as far away from this place as I could, dump this in a lake or something, then carry on. Yes, that was what I was going to do.
I looked down at my hands for a moment. I was gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles had turned white.
I thought I would feel free, happy, safe – all the good feelings that I hadn’t felt once while married, because I had finally managed to get out. Instead, all I could still feel was fear, unbearable and suffocating. Fear that he was going to find me, or that one of his drunkard military wannabes that he called his crew and friends would find me instead, and then it would truly be over for me. They’d hand me over to him, calling me a whore, feeding his paranoia that I was cheating on him, that I had run away not to escape his brutality, but to meet up with a lover. His crew had always disgusted me. They were loud and rowdy, and could finish a beer in three gulps, which was why Jack made me keep enough to fuel a damn bar. His men could do no wrong. His men had war stories, they were fine, accomplished killers. They propped each other’s egos and trampled on mine.
As for my beloved Jack? My husband and the worst mistake of my life? He used to tell me that I was never going to leave him, and for the better part of my youth, I believed him. I thought it meant a promise to cherish me forever, I thought he would provide for me, spoil me, love me. I was nineteen when he trapped me in that house and this marriage, and these past five years, my life had turned into a nightmare, because what he had really meant was that I was his prisoner, his captive, his slave, and that if he caught me glancing at another, I would be dead.
I was still not sure how the heck I’d managed to run away now, but those words that kept echoing in my mind lately, that I was his forever, and then the nightmarish idea that his would be the last face I saw before I died, hopefully of old age, with the image of him laughing like a maniac, had kept poking and prodding at my core, and I’d had to make a firm decision.
And here I was.
I supposed this knowledge was what had finally driven me to escape now. I didn’t want to spend my life like that, then die like a dog, beaten and starved, at the feet of my uncaring master.
Another glance in the rearview mirror.
No more cars behind me.
Nothingness laid behind me.
I breathed a sigh of relief, then looked into that mirror again, this time to assess the damage. The eye socket seemed intact, despite the pain, and the foundation was trying its best to cover the traces of his latest jealousy attack.
I used to be such a pretty girl, a fashionable, modern vixen. I liked to wear makeup, I was even damn good at applying it, and I always wore the trendiest dresses. “Pants and T-shirts now, Rosalie,” I sighed to myself. I had turned into one of those permanently exhausted soccer moms without even having a child.
I’d gotten the black eye four days ago, when Jack thought I was coming on to the delivery guy. If that boy’s gaze had lingered on me, it wasn’t because he had found me attractive. More like he had found me pitiful, with my sad wardrobe, sad eyes and birds’ nest hair. I simply stopped putting in the effort. I had no reason to anymore.
I thought he was going to kill me that night. I fell asleep as he was still kicking and hitting me, as always, deaf to my cries and pleads and reassurances that I only ever loved him, that I would only ever love him.
But I was alive and driving way over the speed limit now. I focused on my body and made my leg release the acceleration to slow down before the cops did pull me over and he’d have a trace of me.
Next, I inhaled and exhaled like I was in a stupid Lamaze class. After five or ten minutes, I could feel my body unfreeze, and my knuckles were no longer white. Something similar to peace was starting to warm me up, when something else, decidedly physical and less God-sent hit me, and I lost control of the car.
More pain, worse than I had endured even at the hands of my husband, made me cry out, and the shattered glass of my windshield got half-embedded into my skin. If I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I would’ve died, I just knew it.
As it stood, I was simply hanging off my seat, the car turned over by the force and speed the other one had rammed into me. My brain felt foggy, like I was in a daze, trying to process why the world was turned upside down all of a sudden. I swallowed a cry of pain and fear, and I wiped my tears.
“No more crying, Rosalie. It’s okay, you’re alive, you can work around this situation.”
I gingerly unhooked my belt and untangled myself from the mass of things, mine and someone else’s, and I tried to leave the vehicle. It turned out to require some strength to pry open the jammed passenger door, and I still had use of only one hand, with the added disadvantage of having hurt my right arm, too. It must have taken me about fifteen minutes to squeeze through the small passenger door window. I had to break the remaining shards of glass and then grit my teeth as my jeans caught the pieces I couldn’t break, which cut into my skin. However much it hurt, no matter what nasty scars my escape might leave, it was worth it. I would fight for my freedom.
“Hello?” I asked, calling the last remnants of my strength, but no one answered me. The car that had crashed into me was a black 4x4 Land Rover. “Hello?” I tried again and peeked inside. The other driver was a female, and she seemed to be unconscious. I could see a large gash on her forehead, bleeding heavily.
I let myself fall back inside the Chrysler and felt around for my phone, ignoring the glass pricking my fingers or the bleeding from my thighs. I needed to call 911. Whoever the other woman was, she looked way worse than I did, and she probably didn’t have much time. I dialed the number and waited. Nothing, it wasn’t ringing. I looked at it and sure enough, it had no signal.
I propped myself on my hands and lifted myself back up from where I was, bearing the pain and discomfort, nearly falling face first and adding to my collection of bruises, scratches, gashes and broken bones.
I was straddling the bent door and roof of my car, trying to get a better signal from a higher place.
“911, what is your emergency?” a God-sent woman finally answered.
I was just about to give her the details of my accident, when the other woman turned into… into a bear! A legit bear, with fur and all. I shook my head, blinked a few times, but no. She was a bear!
“What the fuck?!” I screamed in fear and tried to get away. In my panic, I fell on my ass, but my figure was shielded by the bulk of my ruined car. I could hear the bear noises echo in my head. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe I had just hit my head spectacularly hard and I was imagining things. No way people turned into animals. Bears. I glanced up. Nothing. I quietly and gingerly moved to the front of the car and looked around. There it was – brown fur. Okay, persistent hallucination.
“911, what is your emergency? Madam?” the woman repeated, over and over again, her voice mixing my reality with my delusions, but I was too shocked by what my eyes were seeing to reply to her. I just let my phone drop, and I screamed when the bear seemed to notice me and seemed to be reaching out her paw toward me. I watched the she-bear drag herself further through the broken glass, needing to come closer to me, and all I could do was crawl away, in fear mixed with awe. My back had just hit a tree on the side of the road, and luckily for me, she stopped, too.
Dead.
She looked dead.
“Oh, God, Rosalie, what now? What NOW?!”
When I was done with my new outburst of panic, I could no longer see the she-bear’s chest rising and falling. She’d stopped breathing, confirming my worst fears, yet I could definitely hear a baby’s soft cries.
; With that new knowledge, this situation had gone from a terrible accident, to outright tragedy. I peeked in, craning my neck, and there it was, the source of the crying. Not a baby, but an actual child, a beautiful baby boy, with eyes blue like the petals of a forget-me-not flower. Was it a bear like her, I wondered? It didn’t matter. It was small and innocent, and I was going to help it. Him. Whatever.
I worked the door loose and picked him up in my arms, where he finally seemed to be calming down a little. I wondered if he had any idea about what had happened. I ran my hands over his little body, and he didn’t seem to have broken anything. He must’ve thought this was a game, because he giggled and smiled at me, a toothless, drooly smile. He was so cute and innocent.
“That makes one of us, buddy,” I whispered and smiled. All babies were pure and deserved a chance to live, and this one seemed so harmless, despite his mother being a damn bear.
A bear!
I shook my head in disbelief, still.
I looked around. No one was coming from either direction, from anywhere I cared to look. I grabbed my backpack, then tossed it over my free shoulder, ignoring my muscles and their protesting. I decided to continue on foot, through the forest, parallel with the road. I had no destination, but I knew I should be going through the forest, half-hidden by the trees, just in case there were more things like whatever had scared that she-bear into driving like a maniac and bumping into me. She must’ve been in big trouble.
At least the child had totally stopped crying.
With one last glance at the wreckage, I held the boy tighter and started running toward my new life.
Our new life, I supposed.
Two
Brooks
I was putting the kettle on when I felt it – a sharp pain in my chest. I grunted, pressed my hand to my heart, and fumbled with the stove to turn the burner off. I took a couple of steps back, grabbed the edge of the countertop behind me, and focused on breathing in and out. It felt like a heart attack. But that was ridiculous. Men like me didn’t suffer from the ailments of humans. Men like me, who were only half human and the other half pure beast, didn’t suffer from anything. Except from a broken heart, maybe. Why had this thought entered my mind all of a sudden? Another stab in my chest, and my instinct kicked in. My eyes went wide when I realized… I hadn’t seen Krista and Milo today. Granted I’d just woken up after a long night at the pub with the guys, and I was a little groggy and out of my element… What time was it? I grabbed my phone. It was eleven in the morning, and Krista wasn’t working today. She was on the second shift. I straightened my back, wincing when the pain didn’t subside. No. Everything was okay. It had to be. She was probably in her trailer with the cub. Not caring that I was only in a pair of old, faded pants, no shirt and no shoes, I stormed out and started calling her name. She lived only a couple of trailers away.
