Chapter 2

Sable's pov

The howl didn't come again.

I stayed by the window long enough to convince myself I imagined it, but Reva's face said otherwise. She'd gone stiff the second the sound hit, and for one strange moment she looked at me like she actually wanted an answer.

"Rogues," she said, more to herself than to me. "Getting bold this close to a Ceremony."

"Is that normal?" I asked

"Go to bed, Sable."

I didn't sleep. I lay there running through every version of tomorrow I could think of, and by sunrise I still hadn't landed on which one felt true.

By the time we reached the pack grounds that evening, the crowd was already thick, shoulder to shoulder, torches lit along the stone path leading up to the platform. Every unmated wolf in Ironclaw stood in loose rows, waiting their turn to be called forward. Petra stood near the front with the other favored ones, laughing at something one of the Gammas said. I stood near the back, where Reva had made sure to place me.

"Remember what I told you," she muttered under her breath before melting into the crowd to find a better view.

I didn't answer. My eyes were already on the platform.

Alpha Alaric stood at the top of it, and I understood immediately why the whole crowd had gone quiet the second he stepped out. He wasn't shouting orders or working the crowd like some Alphas did. He just stood there, arms crossed, storm-grey eyes moving over the rows of wolves like he was counting them. A thin scar cut through one eyebrow, pale against his skin, the kind of mark that only came from a real fight, not a training one.

"Bet he rejects half of them just to make a point," the girl next to me whispered to her friend.

"He's supposed to be looking for a Luna this year," the friend whispered back. "My mom said the Elders are pushing him hard."

I filed that away and said nothing. Getting involved in gossip near the front of the line never ended well for me.

One by one, names got called. Some walked up, felt nothing, and stepped aside without a word exchanged. A few felt something, some flicker of a bond, and the crowd murmured every time it happened, waiting to see if Alaric would claim them or wave them off. He waved off three girls in a row before Petra's name got called.

She walked up like she already knew what would happen. Nothing did. Alaric barely looked at her before shaking his head, and she stepped aside with her chin still high, already composing her face into something that didn't look disappointed.

Then Beta Corwin read my name off the registry.

For a second my legs didn't want to move. Then they did, because staying frozen in front of the whole pack would've been worse than whatever was about to happen. I walked up the path, past the murmurs, past the stares I could feel crawling over my skin, and stopped in front of the platform.

Alaric looked at me the way he'd looked at everyone else,bored, already halfway to the next name and then he stopped.

His whole body went rigid.

I felt it too, before I understood what it was. A pull, sudden and sharp, like something inside my chest had been waiting years to recognize him and finally did. My breath caught. The crowd noise dropped away until all I could hear was my own pulse.

"Mate," someone in the front row breathed, loud enough for half the platform to hear.

Alaric didn't say the word back. He stared at me like I'd done something to him on purpose, like the bond itself was an insult.

"Say something," Corwin muttered, low enough that only the two of us near the platform could hear it. "Alpha."

Alaric's jaw tightened. "Name."

"Sable Kestrel," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt.

Something changed in his face when I said it. Realization, maybe. Or dread. I couldn't tell which, and I didn't get long to figure it out, because his expression closed off completely a second later.

"Kestrel." He said it like he was tasting something bitter. "Your parents were the ones who…"

"Yes," I said, before he could finish it in front of everyone.

The crowd had gone dead silent, waiting. I could feel Reva somewhere behind me, I could practically feel her wishing the ground would open up and swallow me before I could shame the house any further.

"I won't reject her the normal way," Alaric said, and it took me a second to realize he wasn't talking to me. He was talking to Corwin, and to the Elders standing behind him, and to the whole crowd at once. "Not for this one."

Corwin's face went pale. "Alpha, you don't mean…"

"I do."

Whispers broke out across the crowd, fast and frightened, wolves turning to each other like they all understood something I didn't. I stood there, heart still hammering from the bond that had just slammed into place, and had no idea what was about to happen to me.

"What does that mean?" I asked. My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated it.

Alaric stepped down off the platform until he was standing right in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his stare. This close, the scar through his eyebrow looked older than I thought, and his eyes weren't exactly cold. They were something worse.

"It means I'm not just refusing you," he said quietly, so only I could hear it. "I'm making sure this bond never exists at all."

Behind him, one of the Elders had already started chanting something low in the old tongue, and the torches along the platform flared brighter, like they caught the words too.