Chapter 5: Scent and Sovereign

​“Sadie, I'm glad you've been looking through the notes we sent, but I can assure you the Historian—”

​Yesterday, Sadie would not have dreamed of interrupting her Alpha. Today was a new day.

​“Is forgetting to mention the sixty-day clause. If I don't want this after sixty days, I get to walk away—no questions asked.”

​Caleb should have been alarmed by her words. While he knew she was right, his confidence in his own senses was untouchable. Besides, he was too busy gawking at her. Was he drooling?

​“Damn it, Caleb,” Nash smacked him out of his revelry, literally.

​“Whoa, right. Sorry. Yes, sixty days. Yes, sweetheart. If you haven't fallen for our home or felt the mating in sixty days, you’d be free to go. No one is going to hold you hostage. Seems like there are good plans to make sure of it, too.”

​“My name is Sadie, not sweetheart. It is my home, and you have drool on your chin.” She stood on business; that was for damn sure. Sadie turned on her heel, looking at the Liturgist. She actually put her back to an Alpha. Her family might be middling, but she was born to be a Luna. How had no one seen it?

​“Did I hear there was a way to debunk this nonsense?”

​“Debunk? Sadie... the ritual will most likely confirm this.” The Liturgist was the only one dressed in any color among the Chattahoochee wolves, wearing a muted purple suit. Her voice was gentle, though.

​“So, if it's confirmed—if I eventually start smelling him or something—then what? I just move my whole life?” She felt like she had no control. This man looked nothing like those she spent her life around. What was that vanilla smell creeping in? William’s historian was wearing way too much perfume.

​“Sadie, it isn't like that—” Mrs. Mercer tried to step in, but her cold, legal demeanor had not bought her any trust.

​“Mom, you work in human courts.” The dismissal was short and final. Sadie began rubbing her temples. She didn't know what she had been expecting—an escape, somehow.

​“Sadie,” that voice felt like warm water after a cold day, “it wouldn't be moving your whole life. It would be building the life you want where your anchor exists. I have been smelling this intense jasmine mixed with lavender for over a month, thinking I was going crazy. A mate is what becomes your center of gravity. If anything made you unhappy, I would move the moon to fix it. Look at your body language now and over the last few minutes. I don't know how it has gone unnoticed this long that you were going to be a Luna.”

​Caleb’s words were breathy, as if he had forgotten the kitchen was full of wolves. His eyes were locked on hers. Her eyes were gray at first glance, but flecks of blue marked the iris, too. Caleb would never forget them.

​The eye contact held for a heartbeat too long. Luna. The word rattled around Sadie’s brain, feeling heavy and ill-fitting. When she thought of a Luna, she thought of Denise Burgess—a woman who knew exactly which forks were for salad and which were for dessert. She was a companion, a hostess—but a leader?

​The idea that Sadie—who preferred combat boots to heels and research binders to seating charts—shared a title with Denise felt like a clerical error. She didn't want to be anyone’s "center of gravity." She wanted her own life. And yet, looking at Caleb, she felt a terrifying, magnetic pull.

​“The equipment is ready,” the Liturgist interrupted. The spell broke.

​The Liturgist was a study in clinical precision. She pulled a portable hot plate from a velvet-lined case and began measuring translucent powders into a glass beaker using a digital scale.

​“Our Shaper back home just throws things in a pot until the wind feels right,” Nash muttered to Caleb. “This looks like a high school chemistry final.”

​Caleb didn't respond. He watched the Liturgist pull a silver lancet from her kit. With a practiced motion, she took Caleb’s hand and pricked his finger. A single, dark drop of Alpha blood fell into the mixture, swirling like a storm cloud.

​“We must reach exactly 180°F,” the Liturgist announced. “Any higher and the volatile compounds of the mate's scent will denature.”

​Sadie watched the steam rise. The room was silent.

​“It’s ready.” The Liturgist lifted the beaker, the liquid now a shimmering, iridescent gold. “Sadie, breathe deep. If the bond is real, this will strip away the 'human' fog. You won't just smell him—you’ll know him.”

​Sadie hesitated, her heart hammering. She leaned in and inhaled.

​The world exploded. The vanilla-perfume scent of the Historian vanished. In its place was the sharp, cold bite of pine, the metallic tang of flint, and underneath it all, a deep, primal wild vanilla that smelled like home and hunger all at once. Her wolf let out a howl that vibrated in her very marrow.

​“Sadie?” Caleb’s voice was a low rumble, but now it sounded like music.

​She looked up at him, her pupils blown wide, the blue flecks glowing like neon. She opened her mouth to speak, but the word that came out wasn't a rejection.

​“Caleb,” she whispered, her hand reaching out instinctively toward his chest.

​Suddenly, the iridescent gold liquid began to boil violently, turning a deep, angry crimson. The Liturgist gasped, nearly dropping the glass.

​“That’s... that’s not supposed to happen,” the woman stammered, her face turning ashen. “The test... it isn't just confirming a mate.”

​“Then what is it doing?” William demanded.

​The Liturgist looked at Sadie with a mixture of awe and absolute terror. “It’s identifying a Sovereign.”