"Seraphina, what are you thinking about?"
The memory shattered like ice struck by a stone.
I lifted my gaze to Fenris. "It's late. I should go."
I had no desire to stir old wounds, and even less to trade words with him.
He seemed thrown by the stillness in me, by the frost where fire used to be. For a long moment he just stood there, unmoving, as if the ground beneath him had shifted without warning.
I pulled my hand free from his grip. His fingers loosened reluctantly, and I caught the faintest tremor in them before I turned away. I walked home at my own pace, leaving him standing alone beneath the pale wash of moonlight, his scent of pine and iron fading behind me with every step.
The next day, I went to the finest ceremonial atelier in the Capital Territory, the one nestled on the eastern ridge where the master weavers crafted mating gowns threaded with silver and moonstone.
When I had first learned I was to be mated to Fenris, I had commissioned the most skilled weaver a full year in advance to craft my ceremony gown. Every moonstone bead, every silver clasp, every stitch of luminous embroidery along the bodice and train, I had chosen myself. I had run my fingers across the fabric samples, held them up to candlelight, imagined how the threads would catch the glow of the full moon on the night I would stand before the pack and receive his claiming bite.
Since I no longer intended to mate him, I wanted my gown back.
But the shop owner's face crumpled with unease, her hands twisting in her apron. "The thing is... Alpha Ashcroft came and took that gown two days ago. I assumed he was collecting it on your behalf, since the arrangement was still..." She trailed off, reading my expression. "I'm so sorry, my lady."
My heart sank, slow and heavy, like a stone dropped into black water.
I knew exactly why Fenris had taken it.
He was about to mate Ivy Mossgrove. The ceremony had been thrown together in haste, rushed through before the current moon cycle ended, and nothing had been properly prepared. Of course there was no gown ready for her.
So he had given her mine.
The gown I had dreamed over. The gown I had poured a year of hope into, bead by bead, thread by thread. He had draped it over the shoulders of the she-wolf who had stolen my place, as casually as tossing a cloak to a servant.
My inner wolf, who had been so quiet these past days, so still that I had almost feared she had gone dormant, stirred with a low, aching whimper that turned into something harder. Something with teeth.
The attendant beside me was so furious she stamped her feet against the stone floor. She seized my hand, her voice already thick with tears. "My lady! How dare he! We should go to the Ashcroft Den and take it back!"
But I only said, my voice steady as river stone, "I don't want something that's been dirtied by another wolf's touch. But mark my words. He'll pay it back. Every last thread."
I returned home with my attendant, and the moment I stepped through the front entrance of the Nighthollow Den, I caught an unfamiliar scent in the main hall. Sour and sharp, like overripe berries and cheap tallow. Two strangers sat on the receiving chairs, both wearing fawning smiles that showed too many teeth. The man was stocky and barrel-chested, his beard thick and unkempt, covering half his face. He reeked of low-rank musk and something greedy beneath it. My wolf's hackles rose immediately.
"Father, Mother, who are they?" I asked, bewildered.
The woman's face lit up the instant she saw me, her eyes darting over me with a calculating gleam. "So this is little Seraphina! I'm a distant cousin of your bloodline, barely connected anymore, truth be told. I heard that Ashcroft boy rejected your mating arrangement, and I was worried you'd get matched with some worthless, packless drifter, so I brought my son here to make a proper introduction!"
Every muscle in my body went rigid. I stared at her in disbelief. My wolf pressed against the inside of my ribs, snarling.
"Throw them out!" My mother was on her feet in an instant, trembling with rage. Her own wolf surfaced in the flash of amber that burned through her eyes. "Throw these shameless wretches out of my den!"
The woman panicked as the pack guards stepped forward, their shoulders squared and jaws tight. "Now hold on! Luna Nighthollow, don't get offended by plain talk. Everyone in the Capital Territory knows your daughter was promised to that Ashcroft heir since they were pups. Seraphina's reputation is already ruined. What decent Alpha would want her now? And that intended mate of hers is so brazen he's taking a secondary mate before the mating ceremony even happens! If he'll humiliate her like this before she's even received his mark, what kind of life do you think she'll have after?"
She pressed on without pausing for breath, her words tumbling out in a desperate rush. "Better to take in a mate who'll live here under your roof. My boy is honest and hardworking. After he mates Seraphina, he can stay right here at the Nighthollow Den. Your daughter stays by your side, you keep your pack whole. Everybody wins!"
"That's right!" The man leaned forward, nodding eagerly. "I'd treat Seraphina real good."
I looked into his eyes and saw nothing but lust and greed, naked and undisguised, the hunger of a scavenger circling something wounded. My wolf surged beneath my skin, and revulsion crashed through me like a wave of nausea.
I raised my hand and slapped him across the face with everything I had.
The crack echoed through the hall. He recoiled, sputtering, a red welt already blooming across his cheek. "You, you hit me!"
"So what if she hit you?" A low, cold voice cut through the room like a blade drawn from a sheath. "She could rip the tongue out of your head and you'd deserve it."
My entire body went stiff. I turned around.
It was Fenris.
He strode through the entrance of the Nighthollow Den with a face like a gathering storm, and the air in the hall changed. It thickened. Grew heavy. His Alpha aura rolled outward from him in a crushing wave, and I watched the color drain from the strangers' faces as the pressure bore down on them like a physical weight. He closed the distance between himself and the pair step by deliberate step, his eyes blazing molten gold, and the fury radiating off him was suffocating. The woman let out a choked whimper. The man's legs buckled beneath him and he dropped to the stone floor with a heavy, graceless thud, his body folding into involuntary submission, head bowed, shoulders hunched, unable to resist the sheer dominance pouring off the Ashcroft heir.
Fenris spoke through clenched teeth, every word carved from ice. "Seraphina Nighthollow is my mate. That is a fact no one can change. If I hear so much as a whisper of you sniffing around her again, I won't be this generous."
He flicked his wrist in dismissal. The two of them scrambled over each other in their haste to flee, practically crawling through the doorway on hands and knees, the man's sour scent trailing behind him like a stain. The hall fell deathly silent.
Then Fenris turned to me, and just like that, his expression softened. The gold faded from his eyes, leaving them that deep, familiar grey. He smiled. "Seraphina. Are you alright?"
I looked at the concern on his face, and for one disorienting moment, the world tilted beneath my feet.
He looked exactly like the boy he used to be. The young Alpha who couldn't stand to see me wronged, who would have thrown himself between me and any threat without a heartbeat's hesitation. The one whose scent had once meant safety, whose presence had once meant home.
My wolf went very, very still. And said nothing at all.
