Chapter 1: The Fitting Room

POV: Evana

“Breathe out, Luna.”

I let the air go slow, and Rosalind pulled the zipper another inch. It stopped hard against my ribs and refused to move further, the seam pulling tight enough that I could feel my own pulse against the fabric.

“It won’t close,” I said.

“It has to close.” Rosalind didn’t look up from the zipper. She never looked up when she was working, thirty years serving this house had taught her that eye contact with a Luna wasn’t owed unless it was asked for. “The Alpha ordered this dress for tonight. There is no second option.”

“Then loosen the seam.”

“I was not given permission to alter the Alpha’s order.”

“You have my permission. I’m standing in it.”

She hesitated, needle already between her fingers, waiting on a word that outranked mine. That was the real chain of command in this house, and we both knew it. My permission meant nothing until someone with Arthur’s blood confirmed it.

“Rosalind.” I kept my voice even. “Let the seam out at the side. An inch, maybe less. If the Alpha has a problem with it, he can take it up with me and not with you.”

That was the sentence that moved her. She reached for the sewing kit on the vanity without another word, and I stood there on the small fitting stool with my arms still raised, watching her thread a needle like the last two minutes hadn’t happened at all.

The two younger seamstresses stayed near the wall, eyes down, hands folded. Neither of them had spoken since I’d been brought in here forty minutes ago. I used to find the silence unsettling. Now I understood it. Nobody in this house spoke to me like a person unless they had to. I was a title they dressed, not a woman they knew.

Rosalind worked the seam open with quick, practiced stitches, and I watched my own reflection instead of her hands, the dress cutting a red line into my side, my stomach held in by nothing but posture and stubbornness, my face doing the thing it had learned to do a long time before this marriage, which was give away nothing.

“Nearly there,” Rosalind said.

The door opened without a knock.

I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Nobody else in this house walked in without one.

“Why isn’t she dressed yet?” Arthur’s voice filled the room before he did, low and flat, the tone he used for staff and for me in roughly equal measure. “The car leaves in an hour.”

“The dress required a small adjustment, Alpha.” Rosalind’s head dropped another inch. “It’s nearly finished.”

“An adjustment.” He crossed the room, and I watched him arrive in the mirror rather than turn to face him, because turning to face him always felt like a concession I didn’t owe. His eyes went straight to the open seam at my side, to the needle still working through it, and something in his jaw tightened like he was doing math he didn’t like the answer to. “This dress was made three months ago. To measurements taken in this room.”

“Three months is a long time,” I said.

“Leave us,” Arthur said, and the three women were gone before I finished a breath, the door clicking shut behind them so fast it barely made a sound.

Now it was just the two of us and the mirror, and Arthur’s eyes hadn’t left the seam.

“You’ve gained again.”

“I’m aware of my own body, Arthur.”

“Then explain it to me.” He stepped closer, close enough that I could see the muscle working in his jaw, close enough that some old instinct in me still wanted to shrink from it, and I refused it the way I refused it every time. “How do you expect us to mate,  to ever actually mate,  knowing fully well you are fat?”

I’d heard versions of that sentence enough times that it should have stopped landing months ago. It hadn’t. It still hit somewhere low and old, some part of me that had been eleven years old once and been told the same thing by a different voice. But I’d built something since then. A wall with a door I decided who got through.

I turned on the stool to face him properly.

“You knew what I looked like before you married me,” I said. “The council showed you a photograph. You met me in person twice before the ceremony. Nothing about my body is a surprise you’re only now discovering, Arthur, so I suggest you find a way to live with it, because I have no intention of shrinking myself for a marriage neither of us chose.”

He didn’t answer right away. That was new. Usually there was a next line ready before I’d finished mine, some remark about discipline or presentation or what a Luna owed her pack. Instead his eyes dropped, just for a second, to the loosened seam at my ribs, and something crossed his face that wasn’t quite anger. I didn’t have a name for it. I wasn’t sure I wanted one.

“Watch how you speak to me,” he said, but it came out quieter than the sentence before it.

“I’m not shouting. I’m answering what you asked.” I held his gaze, because looking away had never once made these conversations shorter. “If my body is a problem for you, take it up with the council that arranged this. I didn’t put myself here.”

For a moment the room just sat there, the two of us and the half-mended dress and whatever had flickered across his face and gone again before I could read it. Then his jaw reset, whatever door had opened swinging shut, and he stepped back like proximity to me was something he needed to correct.

“Seven o’clock,” he said. “Don’t embarrass me tonight.”

He was already at the door.

“I’ve never embarrassed you, Arthur. You’ve just never wanted to be seen standing next to me.”

He stopped. But he didn't turn around. For three full seconds he stood there with his hand on the door and his back to me, long enough that I thought he might actually say something to that, something true, for once,  but then the door opened and shut and he was gone, and I was alone in the mirror with a dress that still didn’t quite fit and a pulse that hadn’t slowed down yet.

Rosalind knocked once before letting herself back in, with a needle still in hand.

“Shall I finish the seam, Luna?”

“Yes.” I turned back to face the mirror, with my chin level, spine straight, the way I’d taught myself to stand in this house whether anyone was watching or not. “Finish it so it fits me. Not so I fit it.”