Page 6 of The Chief (Those (Damn!) Texas Dantes #3)

He didn’t flinch. He took her hands and turned them over, methodical and certain, like he was scanning for evidence, not touching his almost-bride. His thumbs moved with clinical intent, searching for proof, for purpose, for any sign that the mark had chosen her. That his intuition hadn’t lied.

She yanked slightly, not to break contact, but to send a warning. A subtle snap of resistance beneath all that Severin polish. She didn’t flinch, didn’t tremble. Just shifted her weight and met his grip with enough grit to say: this might be a performance, but she wasn’t a prop.

“Your hands.” Smooth. Cool. Bare. “They’re—”

“They’re what?” she asked, voice clipped.

“Unmarked.”

“Of course they’re unmarked.” She actually sounded offended.

“Stop the ceremony,” he stated in no uncertain terms.

A pew creaked somewhere in the front row. ”Absolutely not,” Leif snapped, already moving to intercept.

“Cade, what the hell are you doing?” Titus’s voice cut in next, quiet but lethal. A warning wrapped in velvet.

Cade didn’t pause. Didn’t blink. Everything he’d ever relied on kicked in at once, overriding doubt, decorum, and danger. His body moved before his mind could argue, driven by certainty and something older than logic.

“Trust me,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

He crossed the altar like a man possessed, fast, focused, and unrelenting. Every movement carved a line through centuries of protocol, snapping heads toward him as he zeroed in on the bridesmaids.

He didn’t walk. He advanced, decisive and unapologetic.

It was a claiming, like the moment had already been rewritten and he was the only one who’d read the new script.

The air around him crackled, silent but charged, like static before a lightning strike.

His chest tightened, his skin too alert, as if every nerve had tuned itself to the inevitability of what came next.

First Katrina. She blinked in confusion, pulling slightly away as he reached for her, brows furrowing. “What are you doing?” she asked, voice tight.

Cade seized Katrina’s wrist, turned her hand over fully, then the other.

He studied them both under the altar light, his breath tightening with each second of silence.

Nothing. No mark, bare as bone. Not a flicker of light.

His jaw locked, pulse hammering in his throat.

But he kept moving. Kept hunting. Because if not Katrina, then Leanora. If not Leanora—

No. He couldn’t go there. Not yet.

Leanora flinched before he reached her, eyes wide with uncertainty. She took a step back, arms crossing over her chest like she was trying to disappear into the floor. “Cade, please. You’re scaring me.”

Cade grabbed her wrists and turned them over, searching every inch of her hands, but there was nothing.

Just smooth, blank skin where a mark should’ve been.

No spark. No shift in the air. No heat rising from her skin.

The same empty silence where fate should’ve spoken.

Cade’s teeth ground together, frustration flashing hot beneath his skin.

Something had to give. And if Leanora wasn’t the one. ..

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Then Elise.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. Her fists clenched so tightly her knuckles blanched, like her body was the only thing keeping her secret contained.

Her shoulders were rigid, breath shallow.

The mask she usually wore, that airheaded smirk, the too-loud laugh, was nowhere to be seen or heard.

This wasn’t the ditzy Elise. This was the one beneath it.

And she looked like she’d just seen the end of the world. And recognized it.

Her eyes locked on his, wide and stunned, not with surprise, but with certainty.

Where truth already lived. She looked like someone standing in front of a tidal wave she couldn’t stop, couldn’t outrun, and didn’t want to because part of her wanted to be swallowed whole by it.

To let the truth crash over her and take everything else with it.

Holy shit, she knew. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind. Every inch of her knew.

He grabbed her wrists.

She jerked back. But before either of them could move farther, a sharp voice rang out behind him.

“Step away from my sister.”

Leif.

Cade didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. He heard the footfalls—fast, heavy, pissed—and spun just as Leif reached for him.

One hard shove sent the Severin heir stumbling two steps back.

“Stay out of this, Severin,” Cade snarled, tone lethal.

Leif froze, blinking, caught between fury and suspicion.

Cade turned back to Elise.

But she was already unraveling.

Already trembling with all that she knew. Her hands were closed tight, like the truth itself might escape if she let go. And yet, some part of her, some part that recognized him, was waiting.

Too late to undo it.

Too late to walk away.

He pried her hands open, fingers firm, unyielding, driven by a force he couldn’t name but couldn’t ignore.

Her resistance wasn’t enough to stop him, not when need pounded through him like a war drum.

But she wasn’t passive. She stiffened at the contact, a sharp intake of breath betraying the jolt of energy that leapt between them.

Her fingers flexed, caught between defiance and inevitability, and her eyes—God, those eyes—never left his.

She knew it too. She had to. He had to see.

Had to be certain. His grip was sure, but not cruel, threaded with something visceral and dangerous—desire, want, claim.

And when her fingers gave, when her palm opened under his.

.. it was like the world exploded, noise, heat, awareness, everything crashing together in a single, undeniable moment.

And there it was.

The same wolf’s head, etched in spectral silver across her palm, glowing like it had been waiting for him to see it.

It mirrored his perfectly, same sharp angles, same fierce snarl, same impossible truth.

And it burned on, a steady drumming of heat and fate and something wild he didn’t dare name aloud.

Cade looked up, straight at the priest. Then at the room.

Silence rippled through the space, sharp and sudden, like every breath had been sucked from the church. A rustle of fabric. A stifled gasp. Somewhere near the back, someone whispered a prayer.

He stood tall at the center of it all, the brand still shining across his palm, seared into fate—and into her.

“Small change,” he announced. “I’m marrying Elise. Not Petra.”