Page 31 of Zodiac Hybrids

A… mate mark?

My eyes widened, and I tore off the bandage I’d been keeping over the symbol on my neck. I glanced at my reflection, then over at the astrology charts on the wall.

It still adorned my skin, clear as day. The mark of the Capricorn on my lip… and the mark of the Leo over my pulse.

The… Leo.

That can’t mean what I think it means.

It… It can’t.

Chapter 16

Marcus was walking down the hall, and I wasted no time closing that distance.

“Ah, Adrian, I was wondering when you’d—”

My palm was on his neck, and his head hit the locker with a loud clang, knocking that smug expression right off his face. I squeezed with force that would kill a normal man. Unfortunately, Marcus was nothing of the sort.

“You forced my hand.” I growled, before jerking him back and slamming him into the metal door again. “I hope you’re fucking happy.”

“I am absolutely beside myself.” He grinned despite the dribble of blood that leaked from his smile. Red droplets collected on his jawline and dripped from his smooth chin. He chuckled as I readjusted my grip to better strangle his pulse. “Are you scared, brother dearest?”

“Me?” I shook my head. “Why would I be? I don’t have anything to be afraid of. You just guaranteed my monster will be fed every single month, over, and over, and over again.” This time I was the one with the mocking smile. “And the best part of all is I’ll be using your sweet little girlfriend to do it.”

A flash of amusement reflected in the golden eyes that were more like our mother’s than mine were, and I took that as a prompting to slam his head into the hard metal one more time. He grunted on impact.

I hope I cracked his fucking skull.

It’s not like he wouldn’t be healed in ten seconds anyway.

“Sharing isn’t a problem for me if it means getting to watch you unravel, Adrian.” Nothing ever erased that smirk from his face. “Though I have to ask, if you marked her, why can I still feel her energy so loud and clear?”

“What?” I blinked repeatedly, processing that. “I saw the mark form. I know I marked her.”

“Interesting.” He licked his lips, and I couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or not.

Shifters couldn’t take on two mate marks, could they? It irritated me that I barely knew all the rules of my own damn species. I couldn’t help but envy the magic-kind who had millennia of data to pull from, while half shifters only had a handful of decades of information, and half that information changed based on the blood combination.

Still, even if Marcus’ mark did remain, that didn’t change the way mine would react. I did what needed to be done, even if she might still be under the threat of a mischievous vampire.

I shook my head, not wanting to discuss this further with him right now, then I released him and walked away.

What the fuck had he gotten me into?

The Age of Aquarius

Chapter 17

“You look stressed, Lila.” Marcus said as he concocted his usual mix of ketchup and eggs. He sat across from me at breakfast, while I stared listlessly out the window. I wanted to ask him about the Leo mark, but not having a good segue to do that—at least not one that wouldn’t make me appear insane if all my assumptions about him were wrong—was a hard impasse.

“Just feeling a bit overwhelmed is all.” I didn’t entirely lie, before I took a bite of my chocolate croissant. “Been learning a lot of new information the last few weeks, and I’m still processing it all, I guess.”

We ate in silence for a few moments, and it was oddly comfortable. Marcus was a good listener, and I liked our daily breakfast ritual. We’d gone out on a couple more dates since the first one, but despite all of these nice little moments, I still didn’t know if we were boyfriend and girlfriend or just friends with a chance of benefits, or if we were settling into some sort of permanent platonic arrangement. I didn’t know that I could commit to anything even if I wanted to though, considering my current messy arrangement with the professor. I couldn’t really be in a committed relationship while signing up for a monthly sex session with a monster.

How did I go from no social life at all to such a complicated one?

“Have you been to the library yet? Graves Academy has one of the extensive libraries in the country, depending on what kind books you’re looking for. It might be worth exploring if you’re feeling lost.” He suggested, and it all seemed so obvious in hindsight.