Chapter 2

Briony's POV

"You want me to do what?"

Halric didn't say it again. I heard him the first time, I just needed a second for my brain to catch up to it.

"There's no time to search for her," he said, already turning for the door like the conversation was finished. "Blackfen's watching our borders closer every week. If we don't hand over a Thistlewood bride tonight, the treaty's dead, and so's any peace we've got left with it."

"Then find another bride." Sage stepped in front of him, blocking the doorway like that would actually stop a man twice her age and rank. "Briony's not a stand-in for a wedding. She's a person."

"The treaty says a Thistlewood daughter." Halric didn't even look at her when he said it. "It doesn't say which one."

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Torin was still asleep on the table behind me, blood drying under my nails, and somehow that felt like the only real thing left in the room.

"I have herbs to grind," I said, which was stupid, but it was the only sentence my body would let me make.

"You have two hours," Halric said, "to be washed, dressed, and standing at the binding stone." His eyes cut to me, and since he stormed in, something almost like pity crossed his face. "I'm sorry, girl. I am. But the pack comes before any one of us."

He left before I could tell him I hadn't agreed to a single word of it.

Two hours later I was standing in Marisol's room, in Marisol's gown, while a pack seamstress pinned the waist tighter than it wanted to go and wouldn't meet my eyes while she did it.

"Breathe out," she muttered.

"I am breathing out."

"Breathe out more."

Sage sat on the edge of the bed, watching the whole thing like she wanted to burn it down. "This is insane. You've met him twice in your life. You don't even like him."

"Nobody's asking if I like him." I stared at myself in the mirror and didn't recognize the shape looking back, Marisol's silver gown pulled tight over a body it wasn't made for, my curls pinned back the way my sister wore hers, like if they got me close enough to her, nobody would notice the switch until it was too late to undo it.

"That's kind of the point. Nobody's asking me anything."

"Then say no."

"And do what? Watch Blackfen burn the east border because I wouldn't put on a dress?" My voice cracked somewhere I didn't want it to. "I don't have a no in this, Sage. I never did."

She didn't have an answer for that. For once, neither did I.

The binding stone sat at the edge of the training field, lit by nothing but torches and a sky going the color of a bruise. Ashvale did this part in private,no crowd, no cheering, just the Alpha, the bride, two elders, and the old rite that came before anything the rest of the pack got to see.

The walk out there felt longer than it should've, gravel biting through thin slippers, wind cutting straight through silk that wasn't made for weather like this.

Both of us wore blindfolds for the rite itself. Tradition said the bond had to be sealed by scent and blood, not sight, so nothing outside the mate pull could taint the choice.

I hated how much sense that made right now.

"Kneel," Halric said.

I knelt. Someone's hands,Kieran's, I realized, when the calluses dragged over my wrist pulled my arm out and turned it palm-up.

His voice, when it came, was low and rough in a way I felt more than heard. "Say the words."

I said them. My voice shook through every syllable, and if he noticed, he didn't say a thing about it. Then his teeth were at my wrist, the bite fast and clean, pain flashing white behind my blindfolded eyes, and something in my chest cracked open and rearranged itself around a stranger I still couldn't see.

The bond snapped into place like a rope pulled tight between us.

Kieran went still. Dead still, in a way that had nothing to do with the blindfold.

"Something's wrong." His voice had changed, sharper now, edged with something. He tore his blindfold off before Halric could stop him, and a second later mine came away too, yanked off by a hand that wasn't gentle about it.

His eyes found my face in the torchlight, and I watched every ounce of confusion burn straight into fury.

"Where's Marisol?" He didn't raise his voice. It went colder instead.

"She's gone." I said it because somebody had to, and Halric wasn't opening his mouth. "She ran. I didn't know until tonight they were going to…"

"You didn't know." He laughed, short and ugly. "You let them dress you up and hand you to me like I wouldn't notice the difference."

"I didn't have a choice."

"Neither did I." He grabbed my jaw, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough that I couldn't look anywhere but at him.

Behind him, Halric started saying something about the treaty, about how it still counted, a Thistlewood was a Thistlewood,and Kieran didn't even turn his head.

"You want to know what you are to me right now?" His grip didn't move. "You're a mistake wearing my mark. And I'm going to make sure you never forget it.”