AMARIS

Somebody worked very hard to make tonight beautiful and I genuinely wish they hadn’t.

White blooms on every surface that could hold one, torches burning warm gold in the evening air, three hundred wolves in their finest sitting in perfectly arranged rows like they had rehearsed being an audience.

The whole of Gravemoon pack turned out for this, dressed up and present and looking at the platform where I was standing in an ivory dress that probably cost more than my father’s entire debt, which was ironic given that his debt was the only reason I was standing here at all.

To think a lot of things had happened since I got here to the Gravemoon pack. I thought I had lived the worst in the Stormshadow pack but right now I was standing in the footstool of my detriment.

The officiant was speaking. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here to witness the mating ceremony of Alpha Corvin and Luna Amaris Storme in front of the Moon goddess. It is....."

I was not listening. I tuned him out as soon as he started talking about all those folktales of how the moon goddess started this ’sacred’ ritual.

I had more important things to do, like scan three hundred faces for the ones I needed to track.

I found Ryker first.

Third row. Standing exactly where protocol said he should be, dressed exactly right for an event he was practically dragged to, presenting correctly to everyone who didn’t know his face well enough to see what I saw.

He was drunk.

Not obviously. Not swaying or glassy in a way that would read to a stranger. But I knew his face. I knew the way it looked when he was sober and tonight he wasn’t, the eyes just slightly off and pulled back, the shoulders carrying half an inch too much deliberate effort. But still looking disoriented.

My almost-stepson showed up to my mating ceremony drunk.

Honestly. I would too if I were him.

Rowan was beside him and Rowan was furiously, painfully sober. Jaw locked, hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed on a point somewhere above my head like making eye contact with any actual person in this space might be the thing that finally broke him open.

I had never seen him that still before. He was barely keeping it together and his hands were occasionally helping Ryker stand firm.

Lila was four rows back, slightly left, positioned with a perfect sightline to the platform, which I was certain was not an accident. Deep green dress, hair down, chin resting on two fingers like she was watching a mildly entertaining drama and was simply waiting for her favourite part.

The good part was coming apparently.

I glanced back at the priest who was almost done . That was when I locked gazed with Alpha Corvin whose eyes had been on me since.

I had been avoiding Corvin’s eyes since the moment I stepped onto the platform.

I could not look at him without hearing the word vessel and feeling his hand close around my throat in that study and everything that came after it, and I was still too furious to trust my own face if his eyes found mine.

So I kept my gaze pointed anywhere else. The flowers. The crowd. The torches. Anywhere that was not him.

The officiant produced the ceremonial knife.

I twitched.

What the hell are we doing with a knife?

Corvin glanced at me, just slightly, the smallest tilt of his head. "Amaris," he muttered my name like some sort of assurance.

I stared straight ahead and gave him nothing and remembered cutting was part of all mating ceremonies.

Would it hurt?

Stupid thing to wonder, of course it would, everything in this place hurt eventually, but I poked at the thought anyway the way you press a bruise just to confirm it is still tender.

"In Gravemoon tradition," the officiant announced to the gathered crowd, lifting his voice so it carried to the back rows, "the blood of two true mates joined in the ceremonial bowl will turn white. The moon goddess herself, confirming what the bond already knows."

He said it with prestige, like he took pride in the art of that sadistic bitch named the Moon goddess who made me fated to sons while now being mated to their father.

Cute.

"Do you offer your blood freely?" He turned the blade to me.

"I do." Steady. Good. At least my voice was holding when nothing else was.

He moved to Corvin and asked the same.

"Yes, I do." He responded in a husky tone that fell flat at the edge.

I was trying hard not to glance at the twins or him but it was getting increasingly hard by the minute.

I felt him turn his head toward me when he said it, felt the weight of him waiting for me to look. I kept my eyes forward and refused him that too. He could have my blood. He was not getting my face.

The officiant pressed our palms together over the bowl. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

The blood ran down between our fingers.

Red.

It stayed red.

Plain, stubborn, not-getting-the-memo red.

The officiant’s face did something I would have found genuinely funny on any other night of my life. "Perhaps if we—" He stopped. Started again.

"The goddess sometimes requires a moment to—" He stopped again, mouth slightly open, eyes darting between me and Corvin like one of us was about to lean over and explain the moon goddess to him.

Neither of us did.

I looked up, just once, and found Ryker in the third row.

His drunk had thinned. Not gone, but thinning, his eyes sharpening on the bowl and then on me, and there was gaze in his face that made my legs begin to grow weak like It was about to give way.

Things he did to me.

Beside him Rowan had gone rigid, his jaw set so hard I could see it from the platform, his eyes moving fast between the bowl and his father and back, a man doing math he did not like the answer to.

They both knew exactly why that blood was not turning white.

So did I.

The murmur started at the back of the crowd and rolled forward like water finding the low ground.

I stood there with my palm bleeding into a bowl that flat out refused to lie for me, thinking, at least the dress is nice, because I needed something to hold onto and that was the only thing on offer.

Corvin’s eyes dropped to the bowl. His jaw did was tight and controlled and he said nothing, and the nothing was so much worse than if he had said something.

The priest gazed at us utterly perplexed.

Then a chair scraped and I veered to see Darius emerge from the crowd.

What the fuck does he want?