#Chapter 199: The Marking

ELENA The full moon hung low over the lake, so close it seemed like I could reach up and press my palm against its face. We had chosen this place—our place—not because it was grand, but because it was true. The flat rock by the water where I'd told him I chose him. The silver birches that ringed the shore. The stillness that swallowed sound and gave it back as echo. No grand ceremony. No hundred-strong audience. Just the people who mattered. Mason and Erin stood to the left, Mason's arm around his wife, his expression a complicated blend of protectiveness and acceptance—the look of a brother who wasn't losing a sister but was learning to share her. Erin's eyes were already glassy. She'd told me before the ceremony that she wouldn't cry. I'd told her she was a terrible liar. My parents stood beside them. My father, tall and silver-haired in his formal coat, his jaw set with that quiet intensity he wore like a second skin. He hadn't said much when I'd told him about the marking