05: The distance

As I walked away, I feared and hoped he would stop me.

He didn't.

I felt his eyes on my back the entire length of the path and I did not turn around, did not run, and counted every step until I reached the Beta's property.

I snuck into my cottage, sat on the floor with my back against the door, and put both hands over my mouth. I stayed very quiet until the shaking stopped.

My phone lit up some time later.

I was in bed by then, still in my clothes, staring at the ceiling and cataloguing the different textures of my own misery; the ache in my cheek, the splinters in my arms, the hollow feeling of having said true things for the wrong reasons.

I reached for the phone.

You don't have to tell me what happened tonight. But I need you to know. Whatever they said to you, whatever they threatened, this isn't over for me. I'll wait.

I read it three times. Then I put the phone face-down on the mattress and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until the feeling passed.

I didn't reply the text.

✶⋆🎀 ♡ 🎀⋆✶

The next morning I was sick.

Not figuratively. Genuinely, physically, can't-get-out-of-bed sick. The kind the pack healer called emotional stress in a low voice outside my door while I lay inside listening and pretending not to hear.

The mate bond, even in its early stages, did not take well to severance. Even though the formal rejection hadn't happened yet. My body had begun suffering something my mind was preparing for.

Carla sat with me for an hour before she had to go back to the graduation preparations. She didn't ask questions and brought me tea I couldn't drink. I lay there looking at her kind, worried face and thought about how the person most likely to be destroyed by the truth was the only one taking care of me.

To keep her from worrying, I forced myself out of bed for the final rehearsal the following afternoon.

Draven was there.

I saw him briefly across the room, talking to someone. He looked up when I came in, and then looked away. Fully. Completely. Without expression.

I had spent four months carefully not looking at him in public. Now he returned the discipline and it felt different. Before, the not-looking had been protective. What I saw in his eyes at the rehearsal was something else. Something settled and closed off and worse than anger.

He was honoring what I'd asked for.

Part of me had wanted him to fight harder. I had no right to want that and I knew it. But my heart ached in a way I had no word for and no remedy against.

✶⋆♡⋆✶

Graduation Day

The hall had been transformed from the half-decorated room where the ceiling had come down two days ago into something genuinely beautiful.

The moonroses bloomed along every surface, finally. Their scent filled the air with that thing that had no name. Dignitaries from a dozen packs. Alphas and Lunas and their heirs were in attendance, dressed in everything from formal suits to ceremonial furs.

The DuskFangs Academy served all wolf packs in the Realm, and on a night like this you felt the full weight of that. All that power collected in one room. All those bloodlines. All those futures being formally launched.

I stood near the back in the dress Carla had insisted on lending me. Deep green, simple, nothing that would draw attention.

The ceremony had ended. Awards had been given. Now it was time for the party.

He entered the hall exactly when expected. Of course. Draven Darkwood was never late and never early, because both were failures of control.

He came through the main doors in a dark suit that fit like it had been made for the specific purpose of making everyone else in the room look lesser. He paused just inside the entrance. Not to be seen, just that habitual half-second of reading a room before moving through it. Then he walked to the Beta's family grouping and stood before Carla.

She was beautiful. Genuinely, completely beautiful in a pale gold dress, her hair done by her mother, glowing with the happiness of someone whose life is going exactly as planned.

She looked like a Luna. She looked like everything every pack elder had ever pointed to when they said, ‘there, that's who belongs beside our future Alpha.’

Draven offered her his arm. She took it.

He said something to her. She laughed; surprised and delighted, and touched his lapel briefly with one hand. He looked down at her with an expression I had never seen on his face in four months whenever I caught him looking at her. Patience. Presence. Like he had decided to be here and meant it.

He guided her toward the main floor.

Not once did he look my way. Not even the brief cut of acknowledgment he'd given me at the rehearsal. Nothing.

I was furniture. I was a moonrose in a pot. I was the Beta's ward who had helped decorate and now stood at the back in a borrowed dress.

Lois sighed dramatically beside me.

"Would you look at that. Couple goals, honestly. I bet they'll be bonded before the night's over."

I watched Draven's hand settle at the small of Carla's back as he steered her through the crowd. Light and perfect. The gesture of someone who knows exactly where he is and who he is with.

I didn't let myself picture what Lois had just suggested. Draven and Carla, naked on a bed. No.

Yet when I opened my mouth, all I could say was,

"I wouldn't be surprised if it happens.”

My voice came out perfectly even.