Chapter 5

Dimitri's POV

The full moon is not supposed to mean anything tonight.

Normally, a mating ceremony takes a day to prepare. There are traditions to follow, families to gather, elders to inform, arrangements to make. A mating between an Alpha and Luna is important enough to deserve time.

Tonight, there is no time.

The full moon is rising over Silverwater territory, and in my pack, the mating ceremony of the Alpha and Luna is held only beneath a full moon. No exceptions. No delays. The next one is a month away, and my wolf will not tolerate a month. Neither will the bond.

So tonight it is.

Within the hour, the news moves through the pack house, quietly at first, then faster. Doors open down the halls. Voices carry from room to room, catching fragments I hear without meaning to, torches, flowers, is the eastern hall ready. Servants begin preparing the ceremonial hall, and somewhere below me the elders are already being informed. My men gather near the entrance, waiting on me for instructions.

I give them one.

"Prepare everything. Tell the pack their Alpha is coming home tonight with his mate and their Luna."

"Yes, Alpha." They don't ask questions. They never do. They leave, and I watch them disappear from the window of the guest room Silverwater gave me for the night.

The moon hangs above the trees, already full, already waiting for me to catch up to it.

I look at it for a long moment.

A mate. A Luna. Someone who will live in my house, stand beside me in front of my pack, share my name, my responsibilities, my life. Permanently. With no clause that lets either of us undo it later unless we reject each other.

And rejection means losing a part of ourselves.

Weakness.

I will never be weak. Never was. Never will be.

So accepting my mate is not something I need to think about.

I have made the decision. There is nothing more to consider. Decisions are useful because they end questions, and I have never seen the value in reopening a question once it has been closed.

She is my mate.

That is it.

I turn away from the window.

My wolf disagrees. He's been restless since the ballroom, pacing under my skin in a way I've grown almost used to over the last day, and I have ignored him since the ballroom just as steadily. I intend to continue doing so.

Then I feel her.

I go still.

Athena.

I know she's outside the door before she knocks. The bond registers her presence immediately, the way it registers everything connected to her now, and my wolf lifts his head at the pull of it.

Mate.

I push him back down.

The knock comes. Soft, but not hesitant.

"Come in," I say.

The door opens, and she steps inside.

She's still wearing the gown from the ball. I notice that first, though I couldn't say exactly why it matters to me that I noticed. Maybe because I haven't expected this from the she-wolf of her rank and bloodline. Most high-born she-wolves I've known put considerable effort into their appearance, especially when they know an Alpha is watching. They change into something more striking, fix their hair, add jewelry, perfume, whatever they believe will make them look more beautiful, more desirable, more worthy of the position they are stepping into. I've seen it often enough to know it's almost expected of them.

Athena hasn't done any of it.

She hasn't changed. She hasn't taken time to prepare herself for me or for whatever tonight is supposed to become. She came exactly as she was.

Something about that tells me she doesn't do things for show... she knows what matters most.

She's carrying a small bowl of water in both hands. Her posture is straight. Her expression is composed. She stops in front of me.

"Alpha Romanov." A small bow. Polite. Respectful. Nothing unnecessary in it.

I appreciate that about her already, the absence of anything performed.

"What is it?" I ask.

She looks down at the bowl in her hands. "There is an acceptance ritual in Silverwater."

I wait.

"The male gives a few drops of his blood to the water. The water is used to cleanse the she-wolf before the ceremony." Her fingers shift slightly against the bowl, careful, like she's choosing her next words the same way she'd choose her footing on unfamiliar terrain. "It represents the bond that destiny has tied us in. I carry your essence into the ceremony."

"It is our tradition." She adds.

I understand well enough. Her pack has its own customs. Mine has ours. Tonight, apparently, we're making room for both.

She waits.

I hold out my hand. My claw extends, one clean movement, and the skin of my palm opens without protest. Blood gathers along the cut. She watches without reacting, no flinch, no hesitation of her own, and I hold my hand over the bowl and let the first drop fall. Then another. The water shifts color, darkening by degrees, and she waits patiently until it reaches whatever shade she's been watching for. I lower my hand.

She sets the bowl down on the table beside her.

Then she reaches for me.

I don't move. Her fingers close around mine. I don't like being touched, not by strangers, not by anyone really, not since I learned young that hands reaching for you rarely mean what you hope they mean. Someone taught me that lesson with a blade once, a long time ago, and I've never fully unlearned it. She turns my hand over anyway, and I let her.

That should tell me something. I don't examine it too closely tonight.

She lowers her head. Her lips touch my palm.

My wolf surges. My jaw tightens against it, and I push him back, hard. Athena doesn't stop. Her mouth stays against my skin, warm and unhurried, and the wound begins to close beneath the slow drag of her tongue.

I look down at her instead of at the window, at the moon, at anywhere else my eyes might have gone. She's focused entirely on my hand, a strand of hair fallen loose across her cheek, and I could tell her to stop. I don't.

I let her finish.

The room has gone quiet. Too quiet, the kind of silence that makes every small sound louder than it should be. I can hear the faint rhythm of her breathing. I can hear my own, less even than I'd like. The bond pulses low and constant between the two of us, insistent, and my wolf presses against the hold I have on him without quite breaking free of it. I keep him contained.

Athena continues like this is nothing unusual to her. Maybe, in her world, it isn't.

She finishes. The wound is gone.

She lifts her head. Her hand is still holding mine. I look down at our joined hands, then back up at her face.

She's close. Closer than she was in the ballroom.

She looks up at me. I hold her gaze. Neither of us speaks.

I should take my hand back. I don't.

She doesn't release it either.

Her eyes move slowly across my face, and I wonder, briefly, what she's looking for in it. I don't ask.

My gaze drops. Her mouth. Once.

I look back into her eyes. She saw it. I know she did. Neither of us mentions it.

The distance between us is small. Smaller than it needs to be for two people who have known each other less than a full day. I can smell her clearly at this range, something warm and quietly floral, and underneath it the scent that's been sitting in the back of my throat since the moment I first caught it across a crowded room. I could step back. I don't. Neither does she.

For several seconds, we remain like that, close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off her skin, close enough that stepping back would take more effort than staying exactly where I am. My wolf has gone quiet for the first time since the ballroom. He doesn't need to fight me right now. He already knows something I'm not ready to admit out loud.

I take my hand back slowly. Her fingers release mine at the same unhurried pace, like she isn't in any particular rush to end the contact either.

"I have to go," she says. "I need to get ready."

She doesn't make a move to go until I nod. 

She reaches for the bowl. Before she turns to leave, her eyes meet mine again. One second. Maybe two, held just a little longer than necessary.

Then she leaves. The door closes behind her.

I remain where I am. I look at my palm. The wound is gone. No mark remains, nothing to show for what just happened here, and yet I have never in my life needed proof less than I need it right now.

I have survived wars. I have been cut, shot, broken, and stitched back together more times than I've bothered to count. I have watched men bleed out beside me and kept walking. Pain has never held much meaning for me. Blood has never mattered. I learned a long time ago that the body forgets almost everything eventually, that wounds close and scars fade and the worst nights of a man's life eventually stop announcing themselves every time he moves.

Yet I can still feel her mouth against my skin.

I close my hand into a fist, slow, controlled in every sense but the one I've been told to avoid. My wolf moves beneath my ribs, low and certain.

Mate.

This time, I don't tell him to be quiet.

I look toward the door. She's already gone. I don't move, not right away. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I find myself waiting for something I have already decided will happen anyway, which makes no sense and doesn't stop me from doing it.

Tonight, she becomes my mate. My Luna. Another responsibility added to a list of responsibilities that has never once had room for anything softer.

I know exactly what that's supposed to mean.

I simply don't know why, for the first time in my life, the thought doesn't feel like a responsibility at all.

*************************

Athena's POV

I carry the bowl of water toward the river, a handful of other she-wolves walking beside me in the moonlight, their voices low and warm around me like a current I'm being carried along by rather than swimming through myself. The night air smells like wet grass and pine, and somewhere behind us the sounds of the pack house preparing for the ceremony have started to fade into something distant, replaced by the quiet rhythm of bare feet on cool earth and the far-off murmur of moving water growing louder with every step. With each step I take toward the water, I take a step closer to accepting myself as Alpha Dimitri's mate, and something in that thought still feels too large to hold all at once.

My gaze drops to the reddened water cradled in the bowl, and his face rises up in my mind without my permission. That stoic expression that gives nothing away, the stillness he wears like armor. But somewhere behind those cold eyes, I already know there's a person I can trust. I felt it in the car tonight, in the way he waited until I was ready to speak instead of filling the silence for me. I felt it in the office earlier, in the way he answered Asher honestly instead of easily.

I recall the moment before I could stop myself, when I took his hand and licked his wound closed. A mate's touch is known to heal a mate, and though that cut would have meant nothing to a man who has survived far worse, it was there because of me. Something in me needed to close it. I couldn't have explained the need if anyone had asked me to, and no one did.

I can still feel the warmth of his calloused palm against my fingers, the way his hand twitched once, barely, when my tongue first touched the wound. A small thing. A thing he probably thinks went unnoticed. It didn't.

The trees grow thicker as we move farther from the pack house. The sound of voices fades behind us until all I hear is the river flowing over stones and the soft movement of the women walking beside me. This part of the river is isolated, tucked behind a bend where the trees lean close enough to shut out most of the moonlight until you're standing right at the water's edge. It has always belonged to the women of Silverwater during ceremonies like this one, passed down the same way the acceptance ritual itself was, mothers bringing daughters here for longer than anyone still living can properly account for. I remember hearing stories about this stretch of river as a child, though no one ever explained exactly what happened here until tonight, when I finally understand why some places are only ever spoken of once you're old enough to need them.

We stop beneath the trees.

I set the bowl down carefully in the grass at the water's edge.

One of the she-wolves guides me to a flat rock near the bank and has me sit. Gentle hands begin working through my hair, unpinning it strand by strand until it falls loose down my back, and other hands start on the laces of my gown, careful, practiced, the kind of touch that comes from women who have done this before for someone else and remember exactly how it's supposed to feel. Somewhere behind me, someone hums a low tune I half remember from childhood, one of the old Silverwater lullabies mothers used to sing while braiding their daughters' hair before gatherings just like this one, and the familiarity of it settles something in my chest I didn't know had gone unsettled.

"He won't be able to lay his eyes on any other she-wolf ever," one of them says, grinning as she works, "once he sees you like this."

"We'll make sure of it," another adds, laughter threading through her voice. "Alpha Dimitri won't be able to keep his hands off you tonight."

I feel heat rise in my face despite myself, and I let it, because there's no one here tonight who would judge me for it. This isn't the ballroom. This isn't Asher's office with its careful formality. These are women who have known me since I was young enough to run wild through pack territory, gathered here to prepare me for the biggest change my life has ever asked of me, and their teasing feels less like mockery and more like love wearing a lighter coat than usual.

Once the gown falls away and my hair hangs completely loose, I walk into the river.

The water is cold enough to steal my breath the first time it closes over my skin, and I go under fully, the sound of the world above muffling into something distant and blue to get myself accustomed to the water. When I surface, one of the older women standing at the bank tells me I have to dip in the water three times.

The first dip is for the child I was, as it signifies childhood. The girl who hid behind her mother's dress at gatherings just like tonight's, who learned to walk into rooms with her head high because her mother told her fear was something wolves could smell before they smelled anything else.

I go under a second time. This one signifies the coming of age, when I found my wolf. But for me, this is for the girl who became something else too soon. Fourteen years old, standing beside her brother, learning that grief has to wait its turn behind duty if a pack is going to survive losing both its heads in a single year.

The third dip waits for me. I take it.

This one is different. This is the life I am stepping into now. My new beginning.

When I rise from the water, I feel strangely calm, the fear and excitement from the first two dips settling into something quieter, something closer to certainty than I expected to find down here in the dark.

I turn toward the women. They smile at me.

Someone reaches for the bowl. The water containing Dimitri's blood is lifted carefully, held with both hands the way I held it myself not long ago.

I stand still.

The first stream falls over my head. Warmth spreads through me immediately, nothing like the cold of the river moments ago. It runs down my hair, across my face, over my shoulders and down my body until I am covered completely in the water carrying his blood.

I close my eyes. The warmth continues, and his scent reaches me clearly now, unmistakable, threading through everything else the night carries. My wolf responds immediately. She lifts her head inside me and purrs, low and pleased, drowning in something that feels less like being marked and more like being welcomed.

Mate.

Someone hands me a length of cloth to dry with, and once I'm dry, they bring the gown.

It's white, simple in its cut but rich in its fabric, the neckline dropping low enough that my throat sits completely bare, no mark yet, no claim, just skin waiting for whatever tonight decides to give it. My hair is left loose to dry naturally, and small white lilies are woven carefully through it by hands that clearly know exactly how to make something look effortless when it's anything but.

I'm almost ready when Hailey arrives.

She's the last one to join us at the river, and she crosses the grass to where I'm standing with something small held carefully in her palm. A pearl bracelet, delicate, old enough that the silver clasp has gone soft with wear. A bracelet that I'd recognize anywhere.

"This should have been your mother's to give you," she says, sliding it gently around my wrist, her fingers lingering a moment on the clasp before letting go. Her voice catches slightly on the word mother, and I feel my own throat tighten in response. "I know I can't replace that. I'm not trying to. But I wasn't going to let this moment happen without someone standing here who loves you enough to do it in her place. This is from me and your brother. This is Luna's bracelet passed down to me, but I know this belongs to you."

I don't trust myself to answer right away. Traditionally, this final gift, something passed from a mother to a daughter on the night she leaves to become someone's Luna, would have come from the woman who raised me. That woman has been gone for so many years, long enough that some nights I have to work to remember the exact sound of her voice, though I've never once forgotten what she taught me to be. Nobody asked Hailey to fill that space tonight. She simply did, the way she's done a hundred smaller things over the years without ever needing to be asked, the way sisters do when the word sister was never quite big enough to cover what they actually mean to each other.

She pulls me into a hug before I can find the words, and I feel her shaking slightly against me, and when I glance past her shoulder I see that every woman gathered at this riverbank has tears standing in her eyes, catching moonlight the same way the water did a few minutes ago.

I understand what the tears are for even before anyone says it out loud. Tonight I stop being only theirs. I become something shared, split between two packs and two names, and for a pack that fought so hard to keep everything it had after losing everything it once was, letting go of even a small piece of that is its own kind of grief, wrapped up tight inside what should be nothing but joy.

I hold onto Hailey a moment longer than either of us needs to, and when I finally step back, I catch my own reflection rippling faintly in the surface of the river beside us, white gown, loose hair, lilies catching the moonlight, a pearl bracelet cool against my wrist.

I will leave this river wearing white lilies in my hair and pearls around my wrist, carrying the scent of Alpha Dimitri on my skin.

The moonlight is reflected across the river's surface. For years, I have known this place as home. Tonight, I stand here knowing I am about to walk toward another one.

My hand closes around the pearl bracelet. I think of Dimitri again. 

I don't know what awaits me when I walk back into the pack house. I don't know what kind of Luna I will become. I don't know what kind of mate he will be.

But I know one thing.

When I walked toward this river, I was carrying a bowl of his blood. When I leave it, I carry something much larger.

A choice. A promise. A new beginning.