Chapter 35: Inked

Chapter 35: Inked

🌙 𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐡

I unraveled the bandages he had wrapped—seemingly by himself, because it was an unfathomably horrible job. Too tight in some places, loose in others, the linen already blotched through with dried rust-red.

He hadn’t even tried to clean the wounds properly.

The more I pulled away, the more my chest ached. Slashes cut deep across his ribs, jagged like claws had tried to carve him apart. Bruises spread in ugly patches across pale skin, turning him into a canvas of violence. His body was a battlefield.

"You call this treatment?" I whispered, the words sharp because if I let them tremble, I’d break. "You’d scold anyone else for leaving their wounds like this."

His gaze lowered, unreadable, but I felt it heavy on me all the same. "It doesn’t matter."

"It doesn’t matter," I mimicked in a feigned deep voice.

I guess it got to him because his gaze snapped to me, blue eyes frosty.

I swallowed the rest of my taunts, the words retreating in fear. How else was I supposed to lighten the mode and chase away the memory of the hands around my throat?

The elephant in the room was large and looming, the tension it caused, suffocating enough to choke(I had been choked enough). In the dim light of the room, kept my focus on him.

My fingers worked at the linen, peeling it away inch by inch, the silence between us stretching taut. Each layer I pulled back revealed more of him—more damage, more scars, more of what he had tried so desperately to hide.

I kept my focus on the work, on the rhythm of my hands, but somewhere along the way my breath changed. Shallow. Uneven.

His torso was bared fully now, the hard planes of muscle marred by claw marks, bruises, and blood, yet my chest tightened for reasons that had nothing to do with horror. The strength carved into him wasn’t polished or posed—it was raw, brutal... and other things I was afraid that he would read off my expression alone. I couldn’t trust my thoughts or him. At least that gave me something to occupy my mind.

How do I bandage a man who looked like he was carved from alabaster, reinforced with steel.

My hands trembled as I reached the last strip of linen at his waist. I hesitated, fingers lingering there, the final barrier between him and complete exposure.

He noticed. Of course he did. His gaze pinned me, icy and unblinking, waiting to see if I’d falter.

I swallowed hard, heat crawling up my throat, but I didn’t look away. I let my fingers slide the last of the bandage free, leaving him bare beneath the low light.

The air seemed heavier then, thick enough to drown in. My pulse raced, ears ringing with the steady thrum of his breath, the cool scent of steel and snow wrapping around me like chains.

I paused, hands hovering just above his skin, afraid to touch, afraid of what it might mean if I did.

I reached for the first-aid box he had left on the table. Typical Vladimir—prepared in advance but unwilling to let anyone else touch him. My hands shook as I opened it, pulling out the antiseptic, gauze, and tweezers.

I forced myself to focus, to steady the tremor in my fingers. I’d done this before. Years of basketball and bruised knees, of tending sprains and gashes when no one else bothered. My body had been a catalogue of injuries, and I had learned to be meticulous. Efficient. Careful.

But nothing had prepared me for this.

I dabbed at the first wound, soaking away the dried blood. His skin twitched under my touch, not from pain—at least, not that he would admit—but from the contact itself. Heat surged through me, flooding my cheeks, trickling traitorously lower.

When did I become this person? A perv. The man was injured, for goodness’ sake. And still, every ripple of muscle beneath my fingers stole the breath from my lungs.

I pressed a little harder, cleaning the jagged claw marks across his ribs. His chest expanded with a controlled inhale, his breath measured like he was keeping himself on a leash. His eyes flickered once to my face, then lingered longer than they should have.

I looked away—only to falter again. Because that’s when I saw them.

The ink.

Tattooed across his chest, curling upward onto his collarbone, were markings unlike anything I’d ever seen. Not words, not symbols I recognized—spirals of an arcane script that wound across his pale skin like constellations etched in black. The lines were precise, deliberate, and impossibly beautiful.

I froze, gauze pressed against his skin, my breath caught in my throat.

The gauze slipped from my fingers as my eyes traced the spirals of ink, spirals that seemed to hum with meaning I couldn’t decipher.

"Vladimir..." I whispered, my throat tight. "What are these?"

For a long moment, he said nothing. The silence pressed, thick and heavy, as if even the air itself waited for his answer. His jaw ticked, but his gaze didn’t waver from mine.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet—too quiet. "They are... nothing you need to concern yourself with."

The words cut the air like frost, final in tone, though not in truth. He didn’t want me to ask again. Didn’t want me to see what they meant.

But I couldn’t stop. Not now.

"Why didn’t you let the healers—" I faltered, correcting myself, "the Deltas. Why didn’t they heal you? Or more correctly... why didn’t you let them?"

That earned me a shift. Not a movement, exactly, but something in him tightened, like a bowstring pulled taut. His eyes darkened, ice deepening into something colder.

"There are some scars," he said at last, voice low, resonant, "that are not meant to be erased. Not meant to be exposed."

A shiver slid down my spine.

It wasn’t just his wounds he was talking about.

I swallowed hard, the gauze trembling in my hand, and for a heartbeat I wondered if I had glimpsed the truth of him—what lay beneath the polish, the cold exterior. Something old. Something dangerous.

The striking display of his savagery as he ripped into flesh like paper would be forever branded into my mind. The cold and sophisticated Alpha bellied the utter wrath he could unleash. I was not sure if it scared me or...

Still, I pressed the cloth to his skin, whispering, "Then I will treat what you’ll allow me to touch."

His gaze burned through me, unreadable, but he didn’t stop me.

My hand slipped.

The gauze slid across the spiraling ink, and my fingertips grazed the markings themselves.

He hissed—a sharp, guttural sound that startled me enough to jerk my hand back. My breath caught, chest tightening as I looked down at where I’d touched.

The tattoos weren’t flat. The skin beneath my fingers had been raised, ridged like scar tissue. Not smooth ink, but something carved into him—etched into flesh by fire and blade rather than needle.

"I—sorry," I whispered, throat tight, the apology tumbling out before I could stop it.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Only his eyes lifted to me, and in the dim light I caught it—the faintest spark of red bleeding through the icy blue.

My pulse stumbled, then sprinted. Heat pooled low in my stomach, but fear licked through it too. Had I angered him? Had I touched something forbidden?

I forced my trembling hands back to work, dabbing carefully around the ink now, but the silence between us grew thick, suffocating. His gaze didn’t ease, heavy as a weight pressed against my skin.

Desperate to cut through it, I blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Your arm..." My eyes flicked to where pale skin gave way to steel, the gleam of metal stretching from shoulder to hand. "What happened?"

His jaw tightened instantly. The muscle feathered once, twice. He didn’t answer.

I bit down on my lip, panic sparking. "Forget it—I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean—"

"It was the Alpha Duel."

The words cracked the silence, flat and cold, but final.

I froze, gauze pressed to his ribs. His gaze didn’t meet mine, fixed instead on some shadow far beyond me.

"Why didn’t it heal?" I asked before I could stop myself, voice small. "Can’t Lycans... can’t you regrow what’s lost?"

This time he did look at me. His eyes cut sharp, silver flickering faint in their depths, but his voice was steady. "Yes. We can. But the Alpha Duel has rules." He exhaled, low, like steel dragged across stone. "Any loss or injury taken there cannot be healed. You live with the scars of your victory... or your defeat."

The words hung in the air.

"Oh," I replied lamely. "I take that the Alpha Duel is a fight for the position of Alpha?

"Precisely,"

"So you won?" The stupid question slipped out.

Of course, he fucking won.

The corner of his lip lifted, slightly, catching me off guard.

He found my stupidity funny.

My hand slipped again.

This time, it wasn’t clumsy or careless—it was almost deliberate. My fingers dragged across the spirals of ink, brushing the raised scars etched into his skin.

His reaction was immediate.

A low sound tore from his chest, deep and guttural, his jaw clenching hard enough that I saw the tendons strain. His head tilted back, throat bared to the shadows, as if the simple touch had ripped something raw and unwilling from him.

I froze, the gauze slipping uselessly from my other hand. My breath caught, panic and something far darker tangling in my veins.

Then—without thinking, without the hesitation that had stilled me before—I let my fingertips trace the ink again. Slowly. Deliberately.

The spirals seemed alive beneath my touch, warm where the rest of his body was cool, thrumming faintly like something ancient slumbered just beneath the skin.

His breath shuddered out, a groan breaking loose as though torn from the marrow of him.

"Don’t stop," he ground out, the words gritted between his teeth, but thick, rough—more plea than command.