The Ceremony

Chapter 1:

The Alpha's son had one job at his ceremony, and he'd been staring at my hips for ten minutes deciding whether I was worth it.

Miriam stood so close her shoulder pressed mine. "Stand straighter," she said, sweet as poison. "You're representing the pack too, you know."

I didn't answer her.

The hall was full. Three hundred wolves, candles, the good chairs brought out of storage. Elder Marcus stood at the front with the ceremonial cord and the patience of a man who'd done this two hundred times and would do it two hundred more.

"Karl," Elder Marcus said. "Name your mate."

Karl's jaw moved. His eyes came back to me. Then to Miriam. Then back to me.

Miriam's hand found my elbow. "Smile," she whispered. "He's nervous."

His father, Alpha Roderick, sat in the front row with his hands folded. He nodded once.

Karl's shoulders dropped. That nod was the answer to a question he'd been asking himself all night.

"Name her," Elder Marcus said, quieter.

Karl's mouth opened.

"I reject you, fatass."

The words hit the ceiling and came back down.

The hall did not gasp. It stopped. Every candle flame seemed to lean toward him, waiting to see if he'd say it again. Somewhere behind me a chair scraped and then went still.

Miriam let go of my elbow.

Elder Marcus lowered the cord. "Karl. The words are —"

"I know the words." Karl's voice cracked. "I said them."

"That's not — son, the ceremony requires —"

"Requires what? Requires me to pretend?" He turned to the hall, arms out, like he was showing them a bad hand of cards. "Look at her. Look at her. That's what I'm supposed to stand up here and claim? In front of my father? In front of everyone?"

A woman in the third row covered her mouth with both hands.

I stood there.

That's the part nobody tells you about. The world doesn't tilt. The floor doesn't open. You stand there and your hands are still your hands and your feet are still your feet and three hundred people are looking at you and you are the last person in the room to understand what just happened.

Miriam had stepped away. Two feet. Then three.

"Karl." Alpha Roderick's voice was flat. "Enough."

"What's enough? I'm not permitted to say it? She's been standing next to me for an hour like standing next to me was going to change what I am." Karl wiped his mouth. "My mother picked her. My mother. She felt sorry for her."

Your mother's dead, I wanted to say. She died when you were twelve. That's a thing a person can say. But the words were in the wrong place, somewhere down under my ribs, and they weren't coming up.

"She's not —" Karl's voice did something ugly. "Look at the woman. She can't even shift. Do you know she can't shift? My mother chose a girl who can't shift."

The hall shifted. Not a laugh yet. The sound before a laugh. Three hundred people drawing breath at the same time.

"I reject the claim," Karl said, louder, to Elder Marcus now, to the good chairs, to the candles. "She's not my mate. She was never my mate. Do you understand? She was never —" He grabbed his own chest and stopped.

Something pulled.

I don't know how else to say it. Something in me pulled like a rope going slack, and then there was a place in me where the rope used to be, and that place was empty, and I didn't know yet that it would stay empty.

I did not cry.

Miriam was at the front of the hall now, near his father's chair, and she turned around. She looked at me. Not with triumph. Not even with pity. She looked at me the way you look at a coat someone left on a chair.

Alpha Roderick stood up. That quieted the room faster than shouting would have.

"Son."

"Don't." Karl's hands were shaking. "Don't do the voice. You wanted me to say it or you didn't, and I've said it. You can have the ceremony with her if that's what you want. Stand up there and hold the cord for her. That's not my problem anymore."

"It is your problem," Roderick said. "It's going to be your problem for the rest of your life, and you knew that before you opened your mouth. You are not a child. You knew what the words do."

"The words don't do anything. She's fine. Look at her. She's standing there like a —" He looked at me. His eyes were wet. He was angry at me for it. "She'll be fine. Let her cool off."

"He's right about that," someone said from the back, and the laugh came then, the real one, the whole hall, and it broke over the front row and the good chairs and the elder and the candles.

I heard my own blood.

That's the part. It's not the words. The words are the worst thing that has ever happened to you and then the laugh is the thing you can't get out of your ears, because the words are one person and the laugh is everyone, and everyone is your neighbors, your pack, the woman who taught you how to fold bread, the man who lent your mother his cart. That's the sound. The laugh is the sound.

Elder Marcus raised one hand and the noise came down in pieces.

"The claim is rejected," he said. He didn't look at me. "The ceremony is ended. Roderick, close the hall."

Karl turned his back to me and walked down the dais steps and Miriam moved to meet him. He took her arm without looking at her. The heavy oak doors at the back of the hall opened — both of them, wide — and Karl and Miriam went through and the doors swung shut behind them and slammed.

The candles leaned again.

Roderick came down the steps and stopped at the edge of the dais. He looked at me for a long time. Old man's eyes, tired, not cruel. "Get her a coat," he said to no one in particular. "It's raining."

Then he went out the same doors. They didn't slam for him. The guard on the door caught one of them with his hand.

The hall emptied. Chairs scraped. Nobody spoke. A woman touched my shoulder as she went by and her hand was gone before I could turn my head. The candles got blown out row by row by the boys whose job it was.

I stayed until the last one went out. Then I walked through the back corridor, the one with the bins, out the side door, into the rain, and the whole time there was something pulling in my chest where the rope used to be and nobody had told me what it was.

Three miles away, a woman in a cottage put down her tea and looked at the door.

Chapter (1) Ends.