Kubalas Madu dengan Manisnya Madu

I said "I do" to a lie, and the whole pack howled like it was the truth.

The sound rolled over Blackmoor Hollow, bouncing off the pines, and I stood there in my mother's altered wedding dress with my hand locked in Kael's and I smiled so wide my cheeks ached. Nobody could tell the difference between a woman in love and a woman performing one. That was the first thing I learned that day. It would not be the last.

"You may seal the bond," the officiant said.

Kael turned to me. Up close his eyes were the color of a winter lake, pretty and cold, and for one stupid second I let myself believe the warmth in them was real. His thumb brushed my knuckles. My stomach dropped the way it does when you miss a step in the dark.

"Luna Everly," he said, low, just for me. "Mine."

Not *my mate*. Not *my love*. Mine, like a plot of land, like a hunting right. I didn't catch it then. I was too busy drowning in the roar of two hundred wolves shifting to their human forms at once, all of them clapping, all of them grinning like they'd won something.

My father stood in the front row with his jaw locked so tight I could see the muscle jump. He wasn't crying happy tears. I know that now. I didn't know it then.

Kael bent his head and kissed me, and I kissed him back, and somewhere in the crowd, a woman screamed.

Not a scream of joy.

I broke the kiss first, breath catching, and scanned the tree line where the sound had come from. Nothing. Just shadows shifting under the torchlight, the pack elders murmuring, Elias, my brother, half rising from his seat with his hand already curled like he meant to shift. Our father grabbed his wrist and shook his head once, hard.

"Did you hear that?" I whispered against Kael's jaw.

"Hear what?" He didn't even glance toward the trees. His hand found the small of my back and pressed, steering me toward the reception tent like nothing had happened at all, like the woods hadn't just swallowed a sound that raised every hair on my arms.

I let him lead me. God, I let him lead me everywhere.

---

The reception blurred into candlelight and clinking glasses and my mother's cousins pinching my cheeks and telling me how lucky I was. Lucky. I turned that word over so many times that night it stopped meaning anything.

I found myself alone for exactly four minutes near the edge of the tent, catching my breath, when I saw her.

She stood just past the lantern light, arms crossed, dark hair loose around a face that belonged in a painting, something tragic and old. She wasn't looking at the party. She was looking at me. Only me. Her eyes had a wet shine to them that had nothing to do with tears of celebration.

I didn't know her name yet. Selene. I'd learn it soon enough, carved into my memory the way a blade carves into bone, but that night she was just a stranger at my wedding who looked at me like she wanted to peel my skin off and wear it.

"Can I help you?" I said, because I was raised polite even when my instincts were screaming.

Her mouth curved. Not a smile. A baring of teeth dressed up as one.

"Enjoy tonight," she said. Her voice was soft, almost gentle, which made it worse. "I hear it doesn't last."

Then she turned and walked into the dark, and I stood there with my heart slamming against my ribs, telling myself it meant nothing. Jealous pack girl. Sour ex. Nothing.

I believed that for exactly one more hour.

---

I went looking for Kael when the dancing wound down, some half-formed excuse about wanting him to meet my aunt, and I found the study instead, door cracked, lamp still burning gold across the desk. My father's voice, low and clipped, drifted out.

"—the land transfers on the marriage date, not before, we agreed on that."

"Things change, Marcus." Kael. Bored, almost. Like he was discussing the weather. "The elders want it settled tonight. Signed. While everyone's still drunk on champagne and feeling generous."

"She doesn't know."

"She doesn't need to know the paperwork. She needs to smile in the pictures."

My hand was already on the door before my brain caught up with what I'd heard. I didn't push it open. I couldn't. My fingers had gone numb, and something cold was climbing up the back of my throat, thick and choking.

*She needs to smile in the pictures.*

I stepped back from the door like it had burned me. My heels sank into the hallway rug and I pressed my palm flat against my sternum, willing my heart to slow, willing the roaring in my ears to quiet down enough that I could think.

This was my wedding night. I had a husband inside that room discussing me like livestock, and somewhere out in those dark trees a woman had promised me my happiness wouldn't last, and I was standing in a hallway in my dead grandmother's pearls trying to remember how to breathe.

I didn't go in. I turned around, smoothed my skirt with hands that wouldn't stop shaking, and walked back toward the party with a smile stapled to my face, because that was apparently my one useful skill now.

---

Later, much later, after the last guests had stumbled home and Kael had fallen into a wine heavy sleep beside me, I slipped out of bed. The floor was cold under my bare feet. I told myself I was thirsty. I told myself a lot of things that night.

I ended up in the study.

The desk drawer stuck when I pulled it, and I froze at the scrape, listening for footsteps, hearing nothing but my own pulse in my ears. I eased it open the rest of the way and found a ledger underneath a stack of unopened mail, leather bound, unremarkable, the kind of thing you'd never look at twice.

I looked at it twice. Then a third time, my stomach folding in on itself with every line.

*Everly land holdings, transfer schedule.*

*Bloodline rights, contingent on marriage completion.*

*Territory consolidation, phase one complete as of tonight.*

Phase one.

My name was written seven times on that page and not once beside the word love.

I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough that my feet went numb on the cold floor, long enough that the candle guttered low and the shadows crawled up the walls like they were reaching for me. I read it again, hoping I'd misunderstood, hoping the words would rearrange themselves into something that didn't feel like a blade sliding between my ribs.

They didn't.

Behind me, the floorboard creaked.

I spun around, ledger still clutched against my chest, heart in my throat, and there was nobody there. Just the dark hallway and the dying candle and the sound of my own ragged breathing filling up a house that no longer felt like it would ever be mine.

Somewhere outside, a wolf howled, long and low, and I couldn't tell if it was a warning or a promise.