and sealing us inside.
Aries gently sat on the bed facing me and opened the box, removing a bulbous, but squat bottle of ink, a long piece of wood with needles attached to one end, and parchment. “Would you like to see a sketch of the mark first?” he rasped.
“I would.”
From the box, he took up a sliver of coal, careful of his claws, and sketched a ‘V’ with ends that curled to the sides like Aries’s horns. It wasn’t so bad, and if it was small, no one would see it.
“Can you make it smaller than that sketch?”
He shook his head. “There’s a very specific way I have to tattoo it. It must be tapped into the skin. The row of needles is too broad to go any smaller, but I’ll make it as small as I can.”
There was no such thing as small enough when you didn’t want it in the first place.
“Where do you suggest?”
His eyes raked over me, slowly, catching on the skin between my breasts, on my lower stomach, my hip, upper thigh… until my face heated. He dragged his eyes back to mine. “Somewhere you can keep it hidden,” he finally answered.
“What about here?” I asked, wrapping my hand beneath my left arm and clutching my ribs around my side, toward my back.
He shook his head. “That may be too visible, depending on what you’re wearing.”
I blew out a short breath, wondering where to put the mark, and wondering just how naked I’d have to get in front of Aries. He was quiet as he situated his ink and the tapper.
Depending on what I wore, low between my breasts would work, but what if I was swimming or something? Maybe I was overthinking this, but this was permanent, and I wanted to be sure to place it as carefully as possible. Aries watched patiently as I fought a silent war with myself.
I dragged my hoodie over my head and watched his pupils flare as he took in my tank top. “I just thought it might be in the way.”
He swallowed thickly, watching as I stood. “Place it on my hip bone.”
“Where, exactly?” he asked, his eyes affixed to my hand as I pointed to my left hip bone.
“Here.”
“You should lie down,” he suggested. “And I’ll need access to your skin.” The slightest smile blossomed on his lips, but it didn’t calm me. My heart began racing at the sight of it. I could hear it pounding in my ears.
I laid down on the bed, careful not to overturn the ink he’d propped against his leg. I pushed the top of my leggings and bikini panties down to expose the bone.
He braced his hand against my skin, his claws catching and tugging at the elastic of my pants as he splayed his hand like he was going to hold me down, and my body flooded with heat. I knew this wasn’t… there wasn’t anything between us, but it seemed so intimate. I licked my lips and asked the only thing I could think to. “How bad is this going to hurt?”
“It won’t be comfortable, but I’ll be fast and will heal you as soon as I can.”
My hands were sweating while his were warm and strong. My skin pebbled all over as I shivered.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
I shook my head, my eyes fluttering closed. I wasn’t cold at all. If he only knew how not cold I was…
Distraction. Distraction was good. And I still had questions, so maybe while he focused on giving me my first ink, he would be distracted enough to answer some of them. “Do all guardians have a right?”
He went still, the needles drowning in ink. “No.”
“Why did you give Kes one?” What was so special about Kes? Not that he wasn’t awesome, but something had to set him apart from the other eleven.
“There are twelve Guardians, one made to watch each territory during the slumber, tasked with alerting the others should the Zodia awake.”
“Was the harbinger sent by one of the Guardians?”
He nodded.
“That’s incredible,” I breathed. Sometimes I wished I had my brother’s powers, but I wondered how much they’d even help him if a Zodia decided to hunt him. He’d have more than forty-eight hours left, I’d bet.
“Kes was the first Guardian I made, and he was tasked with watching over me as I slept.”
And he did. He made a beautiful tomb for him and guarded over it constantly. He was always disappearing, and now I knew where he