Chapter 5

She talked while I got ready. Sat on the bed and talked, and I listened and asked questions, and she answered them, and by the time I was dressed I had the outline of it, the shape of what Wrenfield actually was. And that there were other creatures living in this world, that those vampires and witches they show in movies are real.

The town had been here longer than the official maps showed. Built by a pack that came over before the country was a country, dug in, grew, and stayed. The alpha wasn't elected; it was blood. The pack had a hierarchy that everyone understood and nobody questioned publicly, and questioning it privately was something you did very carefully. The ceremony tonight was not a suggestion; every unmated she-wolf of age was expected to be present because the first son choosing his mate was a pack event, not a personal one.

"What happens if he doesn't choose anyone tonight?" I asked.

"He will. There's pressure. There's always been pressure on Darius." She paused on the name like she had said it more carefully than she meant to.

"You know him?"

"Everyone knows him. He's the alpha's son, Zara, not a celebrity. Just someone I grew up around." She stood up. "We need to go."

The festival was on the edge of town where the trees opened into a wide flat clearing, and someone had strung lights between the branches so the whole place glowed warm and gold. There was music, low and rhythmic, and fire in a central pit and more people than I had seen anywhere in Wrenfield combined.

And the women.

I don't know what I expected, but I was not prepared. They were dressed like they had been preparing for this for months, and maybe they had. Beautiful in a way that felt slightly too much, too deliberate, the kind of beauty that has intent behind it. They stood in groups and moved with a confidence that was physical, not performed, like they were entirely comfortable in their own weight and their own skin.

I was wearing Priya's dress and standing next to Priya and trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

"Stop looking at the ground," Priya said quietly.

"I'm not looking at the ground."

"You're looking at the ground."

I looked up.

There was a raised area at the far end of the clearing, not a stage exactly, more like the ground was naturally higher there and someone had put chairs on it. Important people chairs, the kind of chairs that mean something. An older man sat in the center with the particular stillness of someone who never had to make themselves noticed. The alpha, it had to be.

Beside him a young man stood talking to someone, relaxed and smiling, built like someone who had never once been told no. The first son. Darius. He had that deliberate ease that good-looking people in power always seem to have.

I was scanning the rest of the raised area when I saw him.

He wasn't standing. He was sitting slightly apart from the others, chair pushed back just enough to create a distance that was clearly intentional, one arm resting on the side, not talking to anyone. Dark. Not dark in coloring, though that too, but dark in the way he occupied space. Like light worked slightly differently around him. He had those dark blue eyes. I saw him yesterday from the forest. It couldn't be him, right?

He was looking at me.

Not glancing. Not the quick curious look I had been getting all day from people in town. He was looking at me directly, and he didn't look away when I caught him, and that did something immediate and unwelcome to my breathing. I think it's him.

I turned to Priya. "Who is that?"

She followed my eyes, and something crossed her face. "That's Caius."

"And."

"And he is the second son don't look him in the eye he is dangerous." She lowered her voice even though we were surrounded by noise. "He's different from his brother. Different from everyone here actually." She looked at me with something I could not fully read. "He's a hybrid Zara. Half werewolf, half vampire. And vampires are our enemies, so nobody really likes him here, and he has this dark energy around him, so everyone avoids him."

I looked back at him. He was still watching me. Not the way the town had watched me, not that confused alert smell-based awareness. It was like he knew who I am.

"Why is he still looking at me?" I said.

Priya didn't answer right away.

"Priya."

"I don't know, just ignore him," she said, but she said it in the same voice she had used in the car when she told me to ignore the staring and not to worry and everything was fine.

The voice she used when she knew exactly what was happening.

"look isn't Darius so handsome, I kinda wish he would pick me," Priya said like a fan girl I had completed zoned out of what she was saying cause I was already having an headache, I needed to get out of here and breathe.

"I need to clear my head for a while, I will be back," I said to Priya, not even bothering to check if she heard me or not. My head was already spiraling with everything I had found out now. Walking through the crowd, not caring where I was going, I just needed to get out of there, when I suddenly hit a wall, but this wall had clothes on. I looked up and realized it wasn't a wall but dark blue eyes.

How did he get here?

I looked up and realized it wasn't a wall but dark blue eyes. How did he get here?

He looked down at me for a second, the same way he had from across the clearing, like he was reading something written in a language only he could see. Then he straightened and glanced past my shoulder.

"The ceremony is that way, miss."