Chapter 4

To Mate an Alpha.

Kaelan sent for me the morning before the ceremony, some servant showing up at my door saying the Alpha wanted a word, and I went with my stomach doing that slow sick flip it kept doing whenever his name came up, not having one clue what kind of talk this was gonna be.

I found him in some study off the east side of the house, all dark wood and maps pinned up everywhere, standing by the window with his hands clasped behind his back, not even turning around when I came in.

“Sit,” he said. Not mean about it. Just brisk, same as everything he did, honestly.

I sat.

“Tomorrow,” he said, finally turning to face me, “you become Luna of this territory. There’s terms to settle between us first, so there’s no confusion after the fact.”

“Alright.” Folded my hands in my lap, tried real hard to look steadier than I actually felt sitting there.

“In public, we present united. My people need to see strength in this, whatever the truth of how it came about. Means you stand beside me at council, at gatherings, wherever it’s required. You’ll be treated as my equal in those rooms, whether or not everybody in them actually believes it yet.”

I nodded, though honestly I doubted anybody at that dinner table the other night would ever look at me and see an equal, not in this lifetime.

“Privately,” he went on, “your life’s your own. Won’t ask what you do with your hours, who you talk to, what you think about any of this. Expect the same courtesy back.”

“So we’re strangers who happen to share a title,” I said, before I could stop the words coming out.

Something moved across his face then not quite amusement, not quite offense either, just something in between I couldn’t put a name on. “If you like.”

“And if I don’t like the arrangement?”

“Then you tell me, and we adjust what can be adjusted.” Pause. “Not gonna pretend this is the marriage either one of us picked. Don’t expect you to pretend otherwise for my sake. You’re allowed to hate the circumstances of it. Just don’t let hating it stop you from doing the work in front of you.”

That was about the most honest thing anybody had said to me since I left my old pack, and it caught me off guard enough I didn’t have a clever answer sitting ready.

“Within reason,” I said instead, “I get freedom. Where’s the line on reason?”

“You’ll know it when you hit it,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer at all when I thought about it after, but it was probably the truest one he had in him to give.

Left that room turning his words over and over in my head, looking for the hook buried somewhere in it, because everything in my whole life up to that point had come with one, dressed up nice or not. Maybe this was just another version of the same trick. Or maybe and this thought scared me worse, honestly maybe he actually meant it.

The ceremony happened the next evening, torches all lit up along the courtyard walls, and I stood there in a dress that wasn’t mine, in front of more people than I’d talked to my whole life put together probably, thinking, distant and strange, that this was actually happening now. Wasn’t some threat hanging over me no more. It was just happening.

The whole territory turned out for it, it seemed like. Nobles up front in their fine clothes, Isolde right there among them with that same measuring look on her face she’d worn that first dinner. Warriors lined up along the edges. Servants crowded in behind where they could still see. Every single one of them there to watch whether their Alpha’s new mate could hold herself together in front of a crowd, I figured, and I hated how bad that thought made my hands shake.

Kaelan stood across from me, unreadable as always, dressed dark and formal, looking even more carved out of stone than usual if that was even possible. Some pack elder stood between us, robes trimmed silver, saying words I only half caught over the sound of my own heart going hard in my ears.

Then came the part where hands got joined, and Kaelan reached out and took mine.

Second his skin touched mine, something happened.

Don’t have a better word for it than that, honestly. Something. This jolt, sharp and strange, shot straight up my arm and settled somewhere behind my ribs, and my wolf hadn’t heard a peep out of her in days, quiet and buried ever since that hall back home reared up so sudden and so hard I about gasped out loud right there in front of the whole courtyard.

Kaelan’s whole body went stiff. Just a second, just barely. Jaws went tight, and something crossed behind his eyes that looked almost like the ground had shifted under him too, and his hand felt it plain as anything tightened around mine before he caught himself and pulled it back to something proper and controlled again.

Neither of us said one word about it. Couldn’t have, not there, not with the whole territory watching us. Elder just kept right on talking like nothing at all had happened, and I stood there trying to keep my face still while my whole body was humming with something I didn’t have one single name for.

He let go of my hand the second the ceremony let him. Didn’t look at me again the rest of that night, not once.

Lay awake a long while after, going over it again and again in my head. Trying to work out what it even was. Some instinct maybe, some animal thing neither of us asked for any more than we’d asked for this whole marriage to begin with. Didn’t feel like nothing though. It felt like the exact opposite of nothing, whatever that’s supposed to mean, and not having an answer for it was eating at me something awful.

Must’ve finally drifted off somewhere past midnight, cause I woke up suddenly, sharp, to no sound at all really just some pull, some sense that made me open my eyes and look straight toward the door.
He was standing there.

Just outside my open doorway, dim light from the hall behind him, still dressed like he hadn’t been to bed himself yet either. Watching me. Not moving. Not saying one word. Just standing there with a look on his face I had no way of reading, not cold, not the way he usually was, but not soft either. Something stuck in between the two, something I didn’t have a word for any more than I’d had one for whatever passed between our hands out there at that ceremony.

I didn’t move. Didn’t say anything. Just lay there, half sure I was dreaming it, watching the Alpha who held the debt on my whole family stand in my doorway in the dark like he was trying to work something out about me he hadn’t expected to find.

Neither one of us said a single word.