"Dry your eyes. You're up soon. Didn't you say you wanted to look flawless when the pack captured the memory-crystals?"

It took a long while before the whimpering on the other end of the sending-stone finally quieted.

Then Kael's voice came through again, clear and edged with impatience.

"Enough. Go make your peace in the mind-link circle, now. Our Mating Ceremony is nearly upon us and here you are throwing a fit. It's the night the moon binds us, and I have no patience left to coddle you."

Then, remembering what I'd just said, he let out a scoff.

"Besides, if the bond really doesn't happen, could you actually stand to walk away?"

Ten seasons at his side. He didn't believe I'd ever leave.

I ended the link, shifted toward the side, and pushed the carriage window down.

I let the wind pour in, tearing apart the ceremony braids and moonflower dressing that had taken three full hours to finish.

The driver of the obsidian carriage, who had heard every word, opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again.

In the end he couldn't hold it back.

"Miss, what kind of male did you go and find? A wolf like that can still claim himself a mate?"

"When I claimed my Luna, I'd have set her above the whole pack if I could. Carried her over the den-threshold on my own back."

Carried?

A faint bitterness spread through my chest, and deep inside me my wolf stirred, uneasy, pacing.

Kael had carried me once too.

That season of the great storm, snow half a wolf deep swallowed the whole of the Royal Academy grounds. Even the training runs were called off.

My fever burned so hot the healers feared for me. My denmate kept swapping out cold cloths, one after another, each one frozen stiff, until she was nearly in tears from panic.

It was Kael who forced his way past everyone guarding the she-wolves' quarters and carried me on his back all the way to the Healing Hall, three miles across the frozen territory.

Drifting in and out, I felt him shivering with cold, stumbling again and again through the snow.

Yet I was warm, impossibly warm. Not even the wind reached me.

Because he'd stripped off his own fur-lined cloak and draped it over me, and by the end he was drained and frost-bitten, his scent gone sharp with cold cedar and stale rain.

Back then his heart was so real that even a sky full of wind and snow could see it.

The driver clicked his tongue after he heard it.

"So how did he turn into this?"

I shook my head in silence.

I didn't know either.

Maybe he'd changed the moment Seraphine came back to the territory.

The first time he lost his composure over Seraphine, he smashed the paired clay cups we'd shaped with our own hands at the hearth.

The first time, on a rain-soaked night, he left me stranded at the pack hall past the moon's height and turned back to go fetch Seraphine.

The first time I lay under the healer's knife, he was riding the high wind-runs with Seraphine at the festival grove.

From the moment Seraphine declared herself set against any bond, it was as if Kael had found his excuse, showering her with open, shameless favor.

Countless first times, countless times I gave way, all piling up, until without my noticing it had become this.

When I left the mind-link circle, Kael dropped a single mark of question beside my name in the thread.

And then nothing more.

In his eyes this was just me staging a little protest, baring my teeth over nothing.

It wouldn't be long before I came crawling back, meek, gaze lowered, ready to tilt my head in deference and admit I was wrong.

But this time, I was truly worn out. So worn that my wolf had gone quiet inside me, curled small, unwilling even to howl.

Under the front-runners' discreet, startled stares, I gathered up the heavy skirt of my ceremony gown and went back to my room.

I stripped away the moonflower dressing. I peeled off the ceremony gown.

Collapsed onto the bed, staring up at the guesthouse's snow-white ceiling, I still felt dazed.

How had it come to this so suddenly?

Just last night, on this very bed, I'd been too thrilled, too full of hope to sleep, the mark at my neck warm with foolish waiting.

When I opened my crystal communicator, Seraphine had just posted to the howl-network.

【In case certain people get sensitive again, let me share a crystal-vision first so the whole territory knows the truth. This was purely a run-through of the ceremony. Kael and I never crossed any line, all right!】

Attached was the vision of the ceremony procession beneath the moon.

I called it up, like I was punishing myself.

Watching Seraphine in a ceremony gown, gliding gracefully toward Kael through a ring of applauding packmates.

Swearing before the ceremony-keeper, under the Moon Goddess, that they'd never part, that only death would sever them.

Then the passing of the claiming-tokens, fingers laced together.

The longer I watched, the more a bitter laugh slipped out of me, and something in my chest cracked with each frame.

Everything but the claiming-bite. They'd done it all.

Now here he was, telling me they hadn't crossed any lines.

Seraphine's sendings kept coming through the howl-network, one after another.

Tilting her head in deference to the pack elders, gathering the moon-blessing pouches offered for the new bond, pouring the ceremonial mead, the Ashmore patriarch's toast beneath the rising moon...

Before I even realized it, all of this had gone far past what Kael had promised me. She was only supposed to walk through the entrance of the Ceremony Grove. Nothing more.

It wasn't until the very last part, the scattering of moonflower petals over the pack, that Kael's mind-link sending finally trickled in.

【Are you at the den-lodge yet? Wait a while longer in the side chamber. Sera's having fun, so she went ahead and did the rest of the ceremony too.】

【Don't be upset about it. Just think of it as making up for how you made her cry earlier.】

The side chamber was only two doors away from the ceremony grove.

Even so, he wouldn't come look in on me. Not once. His scent never once drifted toward my door, that cold cedar and tarnished copper that used to find me before he did.

I didn't answer Kael.

I just cropped a corner of the crystal-image Seraphine had spread across the network, the one showing my sacred feast-offering already smashed beyond recognition, and sent it to him.

【Why did you let her touch my feast-offering.】

【It's just a feast-cake, what's the big deal, I'll have the lodge-keepers go bake another one.】

I bit my lip until it went white. Somewhere beneath my ribs my wolf went very still, the way she went still when a wound was too deep to howl over.

【Everything you promised me. Have you forgotten all of it?】

Why, when I was already this far past disappointment, did my heart still hurt this much?

The mating gown I'd searched more than a dozen den-halls to find, the one Seraphine secretly tried on and stretched out of shape. Kael had said, what's the big deal, just get another one.

The little moonlit garden grove I'd fallen in love with, the one Seraphine quietly swapped for a grand, dreamy ceremony hall. Kael had said, do what she wants, she has better taste.

By the very end of the ceremony planning, my one and only request was that I bake the sacred feast-offering with my own hands.

I'd told Kael this was the biggest wish I had as a hearth-keeper.

Seraphine hadn't returned to our territory yet, then.

Kael had stood outside my soon-to-open den-kitchen and gently tweaked my nose.

"My baby's so easy to please."

"Fine. When the day comes, I'll keep an eye on every single guest at the mating ceremony. Every wolf has to clean their plate and then howl an eight-hundred-word rave for our master hearth-keeper."

I laughed and threw myself into his arms.

"Such a smooth talker!"

I dragged the progress bar of the crystal-image back again and again, watching that short clip.

The feast-offering I'd come to the lodge early to finish had been torn to pieces.

Before anyone had even taken a bite, Seraphine smeared it across the face of one of Kael's packmates.

The whole gathering burst into laughing and shoving, wiping honeyed frosting on each other.

My wish, trampled underfoot, smeared across the wall, scraped into the kitchen scraps. The warm honey and browned sugar of it, my own scent baked into every layer, ground into the floor by careless paws.

The reply on the other end paused for a few seconds.

The next second, it drove straight into my heart again.

【Willow Thornheart, a person shouldn't be so ungrateful.】

【It's just a feast-cake, why make such a fuss. Not a single one of your kin showed up, even the she-wolves at your side were ones Sera rounded up to save you from an empty grove.】

The scar was ripped open all over again.

I jabbed at the sending-stone so hard it clicked and clicked.

【The reason my pack wouldn't come. Aren't you the one who knows best?】

The other end went silent.

The pain I'd buried settled back down into my lower belly, dragged up by the memory.

That day. Blood everywhere on the floor, a tearing, ripping agony.

On instinct, I'd sent the mind-link call to the one I trusted most.

The instant the link connected, a spoiled, shrill she-wolf's voice was already yelling.

"Hey, hey, big busy Alpha, you promised to run with us all day today, cut it off, cut it off, no answering the link!"

Along with the clanging, festive racket of the ceremony procession, and then the severing hum of the link being cut.

I lost a pup.

When I woke, I was lying in the Healing Hall.

The first face I saw wasn't Kael's. It was my den-mate's.

She was the one who'd caught my scent gone wrong, found me collapsed at home after her patrol, carried me to the Healers, and pressed her paw-mark to the treatment consent for me too.

I'd known her less than a moon then. She took the risk and signed her name for me.

My intended mate, Kael, had hung up on me to go running the ridge trails with his childhood packmate.

The moon-healer's face was tight with sympathy, her ears folded low against her skull.

"The pup was slipping from you. If you'd been carried into the Healing Hall even half an hour sooner, we could have held the life inside you."

Suffocating despair closed over me. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf sank to the ground and would not rise.

I sent for Kael over and over, the mind-link sendings going out and out into nothing.

Not until night fell did I finally have someone at my side. My parents, who had run across hundreds of miles of dark territory to reach me. Not Kael, who was only three ridges off at the trail-grounds, keeping Seraphine company.

That day something in me went dead, and I went home with my mom and dad.

Something occurred to me, and I opened the mind-link thread with the cousin I was closest to.

Before the mating procession set out, she'd sent to me.

【Hey, is the ceremony about to start?】

A few beats later.

【Don't be too upset. I know Aunt and Uncle forbade us from the ceremony grove, but honestly, they've been having regrets.】

【I really believe things between you can smooth over.】

She'd sent me a crystal orb.

Looking at my mom and dad caught still on its surface, I couldn't work up the nerve to wake it.

Now, with a shaking finger, I pressed the vision to life.

On the low bench at my aunt's den, my parents' eyes were already red-rimmed, their wolves close beneath the skin. The lingering scent of warm bread and hearth-ash clung to the recording, my mother's own.

Mom kept wiping at her tears.

"Why does that girl have to be so stubborn? We told her that Ashmore boy was no good."

"Who runs off chasing another she-wolf while his own intended is losing his pup?"

"And then what? He kneels in the snow all night outside the Healing Hall, kneels himself half to death, spits out some hollow little Moon Goddess vow, and she goes soft on him."

Dad's fingers curled around his cup, and he said nothing. A low sound built in his chest, banked embers and warm iron, the scent of a father holding his wolf on a very short leash.

Mom, furious, smacked his arm.

"And you, why did you have to say such harsh things? Telling her if she dared take the Ashmore bond, she was no daughter of the Thornheart line."

"Well, now look. Our girl's actually gone."

Watching the new silver come into my parents' hair, my tears fell one by one.

Dad was quiet for a long while,

then drew a bloodline dowry-token from inside his vest and pressed it into my cousin's palm.

"Fern Thornheart, carry this to your cousin when the chance comes."

"There's five hundred thousand gold moons sealed in it. Don't let her be treated as anything less than what she is under that pack's roof."

A whole day of held-back feeling broke loose.

I buried my face and couldn't stop the sobs, crying until my throat went raw. Deep inside me my wolf made a sound I'd never heard it make before, a low keening that had no name.

There was only one thought in my head.

I want to go home.

I didn't bother straightening anything, just grabbed my things and stuffed them into the case.

I couldn't even wait for the first light-run come morning, so I paid two thousand moons for a cross-territory run straight home.

The moment I clicked the case shut, Kael's sending reached me.

"Why aren't you answering me?"

I didn't respond.

He clicked his tongue, but didn't press it, his voice offhand.

"Things got a little out of hand. A good bit of the ceremony grove got wrecked."

"I had the pack set up a smaller clearing on short notice. We'll just run our rites in there."

The grove was ten thousand paces wide, the smaller clearing a thousand.

The ones who'd come to taste a Mating Ceremony got the great grove. The true intended got the small clearing.

In Kael's mouth it was as easy as trading one den for another.

But I couldn't be bothered to argue anymore.

I answered flatly: "Fine."

Not hearing the complaint he'd expected, Kael paused. Even across the distance I felt his surprise ripple down the thread.

Once it sank in, he let out a breath of relief.

"Now that's more like it."

"The pack's already setting the clearing, and I just had someone bake an identical feast-offering."

Something crossed his mind, and his voice dropped lower, edged with a bit of tenderness. The stale-rain edge of his scent softened in memory across the link, cold cedar and tarnished copper.

"Willow, you're about to be my mate."

"The ceremony starts at moonrise. Make sure you're there on time."

The link went dark.

I slid the claiming-token from my finger and dropped it on the den's nightstand. Where the mark should have warmed at his nearness, there was only a cold, faded ache, a ghost of a bond that had never truly taken.

Then I turned, and stepped out into the cross-territory run home.