Ch. 28

The day of the handover came wrapped in fog and secrecy. The house was cleaned until it gleamed, the tables groaning under platters of meat and baskets of hard rolls. Carolina stood at the bathroom mirror, practicing the face she would wear, then put it away. It wouldn’t do—too much truth in the eyes.

Lyra appeared in the doorway, arms folded.

Carolina gestured at her borrowed sweater. “I look like a councilman’s niece.”

Lyra’s mouth twitched. “You look like a killerin sheep’s clothing. That’s what they’re most afraid of.” She came up behind Carolina, started braiding her hair the way old pack mothers did for children: quick, expert, almost gentle. “Are you nervous?”

Carolina pretended not to think about it. “I want it over with. I want to know what it even means.”

Lyra met her gaze in the clouded mirror. “It means the others will stop waiting for you to fail.”

Carolina shrugged out of Lyra’s hands, steeling herself. “Or else they’ll just get better at hiding it.”

“They’re not all Marcus.” Lyra’s lip curled faintly. “Some of us know what the old way buys us.”

Carolina wished she believed her. But the halls outside the bathroom vibrated with the proof: every careless glance, every knowing smile, every deferential dip of the head from someone expecting her to trip. The only one who seemed indifferent was Cas, who wolfed cold sausage from her fists and observed the whole circus with blank, unlivable curiosity.

The assembly was meant to be ceremonial—a relic of the time when the pack was more than a ward of the state, more than a disorder to be studied and fixed. The room was filled with witnesses. Councilors in blighted tweeds, familiar faces from training, and a scattering of unaffiliated spectators who’d paid for the privilege of seeing a new reign come to power.

Xander met her at the threshold. He wore the same battered henley he always did for first blood, sleeves rolled up, throat exposed. He offered a hand. She didn’t take it, but didn’t refuse it either.

They entered together, every eye raking their steps. Marcus presided at the front, his expression carved from something harder than bone. Carolina wondered if he regretted accelerating the schedule; wondered if he saw his own ruin in the way the pack leaned forward, hungrier for novelty than ever before.

He launched into a speech with the cadence of a predator, all muscle and menace:

“In our world, the future is written by those willing to shed the last of the old. Today, we witness a transfer. Not of titles, but of hunger. It is the one thing, maybe the only thing, that makes a pack.”

The words hung in the steamy air. Xander’s jaw flexed. Carolina breathed through the acid in her veins and waited.

Marcus called them forward. They stood before the long table, nothing between them now but gravity.

He addressed Xander first: “Is this the pack you want?”

“I want her,” Xander said. “I want all of her, even what never belonged to us.”

A ripple through the onlookers: some contempt, mostly awe.

He turned on Carolina. “And you, do you want the role?”

She looked up, refusing to bow her head. “No. But I’ll take it, and I’ll make it something else.”

A pulse flickered under Marcus’s eye—approval, or annoyance, or both.

He did not smile, but the next words were almost tender: “Then show them.”

Carolina nodded once and faced the waiting crowd. She locked eyes with Cas, who stood at the back, a silent witness to every failed attempt to remake a girl into a legend. Then she cut her palm with the ceremonial knife, bared her wrist, and pressed it to Xander’s mouth. He drank, not in fealty but in acknowledgment: I see you. I owe you nothing, and still I am yours.

The witnesses erupted into noise, some in approval, others in horror. Carolina felt the bond snap tight around them—not a leash, but a lifeline.

Marcus wrapped her hand, blood still oozing, and said low enough only she could hear: “They won’t come for you right away. But they will come.”

She pulled her hand back. “Let them.”

The rest of the ceremony blurred into fever-dream. She remembered fending off a line of congratulations, cold bread pressed into her palm, the smell of iron and lavender. Xander never left her side. The two of them orbited each other, careful and reckless, the way planets threatened to collide but never quite did.

Late that night, after the last of the old guard had slunk off smelling of liquor and resignation, Carolina found herself outside the house. The woods beckoned—dark, familiar, eternal.

Xander followed, hands stuffed in pockets. “You think it sticks?” he asked, meaning the power, the legitimacy, the moment.

She looked at the sky, clouded over and yellow with city light. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll stick to it.”

He nudged her shoulder with his. “I still want to burn it all down.”

She bared her teeth, eyes wild. “Let’s start with the world, and work our way in.”

He pulled her in, and their laughter, bright and brutal, echoed into the freezing woods. For the first time in her memory, Carolina let herself be wanted, and did not fight it.