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.
