Chapter 16

There were only two shops in town with enough glass in the windows to make a wormhole when the sun was right. They entered the larger one, which used to be a bank, and it retained some of the vaultish hush. Someone, maybe even the same old tailor who ran it, had painted the marble floors a shocking navy blue—an ocean for gowns to float on—and the racks held only formalwear, arrayed by level of threat. There was a section for what the wolves called “casual” (black slipdresses, lapelless suits), and then there was the Luna aisle, cordoned by velvet rope, watched by a matron with seven tight buns in her hair and a badge that said MRS. HILDA.

Elena watched Damon and Devin and Donovan shadow her in, their faces instantly schooled to stone. The air was full—charged, and a little anxious; the triplets were unaccustomed to civilian errands, and her presence didn’t help. She smiled at it, suddenly light, even as she trailed her hand along a rack of stiff embroidered gowns.

“I can try on as many as I want, right?” she said, barely looking at the matron.

“You must,” Hilda replied, with the command of a general. “How else will we find the one?”

The triplets conferred in wolfish hush while Elena selected a few options. She went for color at first: a red sheath, wine-purple lace. The mirrors in the shop were cruel, showing every inch of her bare thighs, the lingering marks. Elena tried them on anyway, emerging to three sets of eyes gone slightly glassy and then, as she turned on her heel, soft with something like reverence.

The third dress was a sharp shock of white, bordered in gold, slit up the left leg high enough to make standing up seem dangerous. It was not at all her: ethereal and a bit obscene, its bodice cut to show off her wolf-bite collarbone. Damon whistled. Dev buried his hands in his pockets and stared so intently she nearly giggled.

“Too much?” she asked, twisting to see herself from behind.

“Too good,” Devin said, even as he looked away.

Damon shrugged, then grinned. “Why pretend to be anything but a queen?”

Donovan, as ever, was silent. But he rose from the bench, took her by the upper arms, and stared hard into her face, as if trying to memorize every contour, every fleck in her eyes. Then, without another word, he reached down and smoothed the white silk against her hip, down the naked length of her thigh. The touch was clinical and obscene at once, and Elena felt it, a jolt of heat up her whole being.

“Is this the one?” said Hilda, her gaze sly.

Elena was about to scoff, choose something less bridal, more fierce. But she saw the effect—on the triplets, on herself. They weren’t staring at a girl trussed up for ritual; they were seeing the Luna. Their Luna. The hunger and pride in them was so fierce she felt suddenly, shockingly exposed, not by the slit in the dress or the neck or the molded bodice but by the enormous need of it. Like being claimed without a single hand laid on her.

“I’ll take it,” she said, the words forcing the air from her lungs.

Hilda began fussing with the hem, murmuring adjustments. Elena let her, but her eyes never left the triplets. “You think the elders will faint?” she teased.

“They’ll cower,” said Damon, voice thick. “That’s the point.”

Donovan’s hand stayed at her hip, tightening until it almost bruised. She almost told him to let go, but she found she liked the pressure, the certainty it pressed into her bones.

“Why white?” she asked pointedly, to none of them, or maybe to herself.

Dev shrugged, then smiled crooked. “It looks like a flag. Not surrender, though. The opposite.”

“It looks like you own us,” Damon said, and managed to sound only a little bitter about it.

Donovan finally spoke. “It’s tradition. But you make it dangerous again.”

By the time she changed back, the decision was made. The matron wrapped the dress in tissue, folded it into a paper coffined box, and refused payment with a wink: “On the house, for our Luna.” They left the store in silence, the heat of noon baked into their skin, and Elena felt oddly giddy, like she’d swapped her blood for something fizzy and forbidden.

She found herself hyperaware of the triplets as they walked back—Donovan brooding, Damon bouncing pebbles, Dev closer to her than air. The future felt thickening, inevitable, the shape of it already made and waiting for her to step inside.

“So,” she said, as a kind of challenge, “what do you three wear to a Luna ceremony? You gonna show up in nothing but a smile?”

Devin actually blushed; Damon cackled. “We’ll find somethin’ nice. Meantime—” he stopped, swung the dress box in the air, “Donny says the seamstress across town has to fit us for ceremonial silks. Whatever that means.”

The errand was easier; the tailor pinned them in turn, muttering about shoulders and thighs, taking every measure as if preparing for battle. The triplets let themselves be handled, barely flinching even when Elena teased them—“Gonna comb your hair for once, Damon?” “Dev, do you even own shoes?”—and she saw their unease settle into something gentler, mingled pride and dread and need.

While Donovan was being wrangled into a vest with gold threading, Damon pulled her aside and said, very quietly, “You know they’ll try to test you on the floor, during the ceremony? The elders. They’ll poke and prod until you bleed.”

She sized him up, almost grateful for the warning. “They can try.”

He grinned, but lurking underneath was hunger, and maybe gratitude. She sensed they all lived with the gnawing fear of losing each other, of having their claim dissected on the altar of tradition. Whatever came, she would have to be sharp enough not to give them a reason to doubt.

She squeezed his hand, not gentle, and he squeezed back.

They finished the fittings and walked home in the long slant of afternoon. Elena imagined the dress, the crowd, the heat of three sets of eyes on her in the center of a room full of people who all wanted something. The hunger of it, the weight, made her shiver in anticipation and in warning. She wondered what kind of Luna she’d be, whether tradition would swallow her whole, or if, with three wolves at her back, she could tear herself a new place in the order.

By nightfall, the house was full of restless energy. The triplets argued about table arrangements and who would keep the council from heckling, and how to sneak honey wine into the after-feast without risking the pack’s reputation. Elena, watching them, already understood that nothing about this was going to be easy, but maybe that was what made it worth doing.

When they finally fell together in the narrow bed, Donovan half-snarled, “Tomorrow, the world tries to take you away from us. Tonight, you’re ours.”

She thought she might float apart from how much she wanted that, how much she wanted them. And so, when they touched her, she let go of every last thought of tradition, and let herself be threshed, over and over, into something new and wild and unbreakable.

She drifted to sleep with the taste of them on her tongue and the cool, secret promise of the white dress lying in wait, ready to make the whole world watch her burn.