Chapter 3: The Snow-White Veil

<Cassandra>

My eyes fought against the raging headache in my skull and slowly peeled open. The surface beneath me was soft, impossibly soft if I was being honest. And it was at that moment that I realized I was in a bed.

That was the first thing that didn't make sense.

The second thing that didn't make sense was the fact that, besides the headache, I couldn’t feel the piercing pain in my chest anymore. 

I sat up slowly, waiting for the wound in my chest to return and announce itself. But while I looked around the room, desperately trying to distract myself from the pain, it never came. Instead, all I felt was the warmth that the fireplace across the room was working so hard to produce.

I pressed one hand against my chest and reached inward, the way every wolf instinctively does when they want to feel their bond.

There was truly nothing there.

‘Healing potion.’ I muttered inaudibly as my eyes widened.  I stared at the far wall of this unfamiliar room and let the realization of what had happened sink in.

The room in question was large. Larger than any room I had ever slept in. The walls were a deep charcoal, and all the furniture looked to be of magnificent quality. 

I glanced around the room once more, realizing that I was completely alone. There were no signs of guards at the door that I could see. And a window to my left, with its curtains half-drawn, allowing the pale morning light to press through.

On the small table beside the bed was a cup of something that I really had no intention of finding out, and a folded pile of clean white clothes.

Nobody in the wolf world would ever hand a rogue exile a warm bed and a hot drink out of the goodness of their heart. I may have been unfortunate my entire life, but I wasn’t stupid.

I stared at both for a long moment, squinting my eyes in thought. 'Why are they treating me this way? What could they possibly want from me?'

The sound of the door opening pulled me out of my own head just in time for me to turn and see a young female wolf step inside. She was neatly dressed in a maid’s outfit and carried the cheerful expression of someone who hadn’t known struggle.

"Good morning," she said pleasantly, "How are you feeling?"

"Where am I?" I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"Much better, I hope." She replied, completely ignoring my question. Then she moved toward the window and adjusted the curtain without looking at me. "Are you in any pain?"

"Who lives here?" I tried again.

"Your bath is already drawn." She gestured toward the door at the far end of the room. "And there are fresh clothes laid out on the chair beside it."

I stared at the side of her face for a long moment. "I'd like to know where I am first."

"Of course." She smiled at me. "The bath is just through there. Take all the time you need."

*

The bath turned out to be the most effective non-answer I had ever encountered in my life.

I sat in the warm water longer than I should have, telling myself it was because my body was still recovering and not because I had absolutely no desire to step out and discover what came next. The warmth worked its way into my muscles, making me realize they were still carrying the cold of the forest floor, and for a small handful of minutes, I let myself simply enjoy the sensation.

'It won't last,' I told myself, regardless.

I had barely dried off when the bedroom door swung open behind me. It didn’t take a genius to know that my second visitor definitely wasn’t the maid from before.

Oh no.

This time, it was four maids. Followed by what I can only describe as an entire procession filing through the door with their arms full.

Long white fabric. Flowers. Thin ribbons. Sewing kit. A silver comb catching the light from the window.

I stood in the center of the room and watched them come toward me with just one thought in my mind.

'What the fuck is happening?'

They worked with insane precision. The maids guided me into position. The fabric went over my head and settled at my feet. Fingers moved through my still-damp hair, weaving sections and pressing flowers into the plaits.

I opened my mouth twice to ask what was happening, and both times, I received a gentle, redirecting response that told me absolutely nothing. Nobody explained anything to me, no matter how many times I asked or fought. 

By the time they stepped back, I was finally able to catch my reflection in the mirror across the room.

I almost didn't recognize myself.

The gown was the color of fresh snow, fitted at the waist before it fell to the floor. My dark hair had been pinned up, braided exceptionally, and woven through with small white flowers that, for some reason, looked like they belonged there. 

My usually dark, brown eyes somehow looked brighter, like a cool shade of honey amber. And the rosiness in my cheeks that I hadn’t seen in years was finally back.

'Is that… me?' I gasped under my breath.

It was.

The door suddenly swung open, and a familiar figure walked in.

He was tall, with a sharp jawline and jet-black hair, with eyes I recognized from the forest floor. The same eyes that had looked down at me with a look of both frustration and curiosity, while I lay in the dirt with a vial in my hand.

I kept my voice very steady. "Who are you?"

"Jasper," he answered matter-of-factly. "Beta of the Blackthorne pack."

The name of the pack was foreign to me, which told me one thing with complete certainty — I was nowhere near Bloodwyn territory.

I exhaled slowly through my nose as I thought of my next question. "What is going on?"

He looked at me for a moment, probably thinking just how much truth he should actually reveal.

"I found you nearly dead in the forest, as I’m sure you remember," he said. "I had originally planned to make you my personal slave." He paused. "But lucky for you, it seems the moon goddess had other plans."

"What other plans?” I asked as a chill ran down my spine. “What’s going on?"

Jasper gazed into my eyes and smirked softly, but his mouth remained shut.

Before I could push further, a sound cut through the walls from somewhere outside — the unmistakable sound of wolves howling.

The sound moved through the room and reverberated deep in my spine.

Jasper crossed the room toward me, and I took a step back on instinct. His smirk returned, and he lifted his hand, but he didn't reach for me. Instead, he reached past me, and I felt the light weight of a veil lifted carefully from the back of my head and drawn forward, over my face.

I immediately went very still as a sudden realization washed over me.

The white veil settled across my face, and through it, the room dimmed considerably. The flowers in my hair. The gown pooled at my feet. The sound of ceremonial howls still drifting in from somewhere beyond these walls.

Jasper stepped back into my line of sight.

"Walk forward," he said quietly. "Don't stop. And don't make a scene." His voice dropped to barely above a murmur, "If you do anything other than exactly what I just said, I promise you, whatever you currently believe the worst outcome of tonight is, it will be considerably much worse than that."

I gulped and said nothing.

He offered me his arm, and I took it, because there was nothing else to take.

He led me out of the room, down a corridor I had never walked, through a set of tall doors that opened onto the outside world — and the world I stepped into pulled the breath straight from my chest.

An open-air ceremony stretched out before me in full swing. Flowers strewn the entire length of a wide, torchlit aisle. Hundreds of wolves standing in formal lines along either side, dressed in their finest, their faces carrying an expression of awe. 

It was, without question, the most breathtaking thing I had ever seen in my life. And I was the one wearing the veil.

'Oh,' was the only thing my mind could produce. 'Oh, no.'

Jasper's hand pressed gently but firmly against the small of my back, and the wolves nearest the entrance turned to look.

I started walking.

The aisle was long, and every step I took was a step I did not have the option of taking back. I kept my eyes forward, moving past faces I didn't know, until my gaze reached the altar at the far end of the aisle, and found the man standing there.

He was tall, taller than Jasper. His hair was sandy-brown, exceptionally groomed, and perfect. Even from this distance, even through the thin white veil, his presence hit me like a freight train, and it took everything from me not to buckle and drop to the ground.

‘Powerful!’

He watched me walk toward him. Every step I took brought him closer, and also the soul-crushing reality of what I was walking into.

Finally, there was no more distance to cover between us, and I was standing before him.

The entire world stilled around us, and it felt like all the oxygen in the atmosphere had been sucked away with a huge vacuum.

Then, he reached out and lifted the veil slowly from my face.