The Hall

Her mother had texted on Monday night, a little after eight. All fine, told you so. The healer says I need more sleep and less coffee. Love you. Celia had smiled and gone to bed without thinking about it again.

On Thursday she got to the pack's hall straight from work, twenty minutes early. She let herself in with the key Caroline had given her and, for a while, simply stood inside the door.

The hall sat in the oldest part of Northbridge, among stone buildings far older than the glass towers downtown. It was one long room under a high wooden ceiling, with tall windows down the west side and a raised platform at the far end where every Alpha in the pack's history had been sworn in. Celia had worked as an architect for nine years, four of them at Ellery Design Group, and she could not walk into a building without reading it. An evening ceremony would fill the place with gold. Down the center of the floor ran a path worn pale and smooth, where generations of the pack had walked toward that platform.

She followed it herself, slowly, and pictured the room full.

Colin arrived forty minutes late, still in his suit, with his phone in his hand. He ran Avenor Technologies, and this winter the company was closing a merger his board had chased for two years. He had warned her it would eat every hour he had.

"I'm sorry." He kissed her and put the phone in his pocket, where it went on buzzing. "The call ran over. Then another one started."

"It's fine. I had the place to myself."

He glanced toward the far end, where he had been sworn in, then back at her. "So. Can you see it?"

"I can see all of it."

They walked the length of the room while she talked through where the chairs would go and how many it could seat without anyone feeling crowded. She had already decided on the number.

"Eighty. People we actually know."

Colin's phone buzzed again. He silenced it without looking and let out a slow breath, and Celia, who knew every version of that breath, waited.

"What?"

"Nothing." He seemed to choose his next words with care. "What Paige said at dinner, about the whole territory wanting to be there. It wasn't completely off. Some people are going to expect an invitation."

"Which people?"

"The council. A few of the older families. Some of the Alphas I deal with, once word gets around. None of them would say anything if they weren't invited. They'd just remember it."

"I don't want to get married in front of people who are only there so they won't be offended."

"I know." He sounded as though he meant it, and as though he also meant the other thing. "Let's start at eighty and see where we land."

It was not an answer, and Celia knew it was not, but his phone was buzzing again and he looked more tired than she had seen him in months. She let it go.

At the front of the room, a little to the left of the platform, she stopped. "Here. I want a chair here for my father."

Colin came to stand beside her. He had never met Thomas Whitcomb, who had died a few months after the housewarming, but he knew the story. Celia shared it with anyone who mattered. When her father was barely grown, he had taken a job clearing out an old factory, and something in the walls had been laced with silver. He had lived, but the damage never healed the way a wolf's injuries were supposed to, and he had known from then on that he would have less time than everyone else. He had told her when she was twelve, sitting with her on the back steps of their house, so it would never come as a shock. It had come as one anyway.

"Front row," Colin agreed quietly. "Next to your mother."

For a minute neither of them said anything, and his phone, for once, stayed quiet.

They locked up together. Out on the steps it had gone dark and cold, and Colin walked her to her car, kissed her through the open window, and promised to call on his lunch break tomorrow.

---

He was still standing on the hall steps, watching her taillights turn the corner, when his phone rang. He almost ignored it until he saw the name.

"Tell me you're not still at the office," Paige said.

"I'm at the hall."

"Good. Is Celia already redesigning it in her head?" She didn't wait for him to agree. "That's not why I'm calling. I've seen what this merger is doing to your calendar. You're going to be buried until spring, and you know it, so let me take some of the wedding off your plate. Vendors, appointments, all the calls you won't have time to return. Keeping a hundred moving pieces straight is my whole job."

Colin looked back at the dark windows of the hall. He thought about the number Celia had wanted, and the people who would expect more, and how few hours the next six months would hold.

"I should talk to Celia first."

"Talk to her. But she has her own work, and you have a merger, and somebody has to keep track of all of it." Her voice softened. "I just want this to be easy for both of you."

She had been saying things like that to him since they were six, and she had nearly always been right. He had trusted her with everything else in his life.

"All right," he told her. "Thank you. I'll let Celia know."

It seemed like such a small thing. He meant to mention it at lunch, and by lunch it was so small he forgot it was there.