The Accord

Chapter 3: The Accord

Maren POV

I stood up. My legs held, and that surprised me.

"For you," I said.

"For Dad." Sloane crossed the bathroom and set her phone face-up on the marble counter, next to the sink, so the photographs stayed lit. "Think about who you're doing it for. You've always been good at that."

"Doing what?"

"The Crown Accord." She said it slowly, so I would not miss any of it. "Cedar Ridge signed it eleven years ago. Every decade the Crown takes a daughter from one of the founding packs, and the pack keeps its land and its protection. This decade, it's ours. Dad's office put forward a name three weeks ago." She smiled. "Mine."

I looked at Grant. He had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the carpet.

"You were going to marry the King," I said.

"I was going to marry a crown." She picked a thread off her coat sleeve. "Two fiancées, Mare. Both dead before the wedding date. The Palace says poison. The pack says he did it himself. Either way, I'm not interested in being the third."

"So you drugged me."

"I gave you what you needed. That drink was Moonveil. It clouds the head and hides a she-wolf's scent for weeks. Every Alpha in that building spent last night smelling for something wrong, and nobody caught a thing on you. I was careful." She tilted her head. "Well. Until the mark."

I said nothing.

I was thinking about a sealed bottle of water landing on a carpet. About a man who said, I wouldn't drink from anything I hadn't watched someone pour.

Two fiancées. Both dead.

I had heard it on the news, the way everyone had. A young woman from the Valmont pack. Then a second, from the coast. I had never once pictured a man sitting alone in the dark with the lights off and his hand shaking on the edge of a desk.

I knew whose mark was on my back. Sloane didn't.

I had to keep it that way.

If Sloane learned who he was, she would sell the secret to the highest bidder, or to him. Either way I would lose the only thing I still held. I did not know yet what that thing was worth. I only knew I would not hand it to her. Not the mark. Not his name. Not any of it. Not yet, anyway.

"Say it plainly," I said. "What do you want?"

"Saturday." She said it softly. "A private ceremony at Duskhollow. You go in my place. Dad has already signed the amended Accord. Your name, not mine. All you have to do is walk down an aisle and say yes."

"And if I say no?"

She picked up her phone. Tapped it once. Held it toward me.

The service door. The corridor. Me, leaning against the plaster with my hair wet and my hand flat on the wall. The timestamp read 11:42 p.m. The next image showed the door of the suite, with the number clear. She had followed me up the service stairs and stood in the hall with her phone raised. I had been behind that door the whole time, and I had never heard her.

"Pack law is simple," Sloane said. "An unmated woman, marked by an Alpha nobody can name. Tainted. Cast out of Cedar Ridge before the end of the week. And Dad loses the Beta seat he's held for twenty-nine years, because he raised a daughter who disgraced the pack." She locked the screen. "Nobody has seen these. Yet. They go to the Council tonight, or they go in the bin. Saturday, Mare. Five days."

Grant cleared his throat. He had not once looked up. "Maren. I'm sorry it came to this."

"No, you're not."

"I—"

"You did not say my name once in that bedroom." I turned and looked at him. "You said it just now, because she told you to."

His jaw worked. He took a step back.

Sloane's mouth tightened. Just for a second. It was the first thing I had ever said to either of them that she hadn't planned for.

"Get dressed," she said. "Dad's downstairs, and he'd like to see you before the Council arrives. I've told him you're ill. Don't make a liar of me."

She walked out. Grant followed, closing the door softly behind her.

I stayed in the bathroom with the faucet running and my hands braced on the sink.

Five days.

I turned my back to the mirror and looked over my shoulder. The mark was larger than my palm. I touched the edge with two fingers, and heat ran down my arm, and I hissed through my teeth. A high collar would cover it. A tight dress would cover it. For five days, and then for as long as I lived.

I faced the girl in the glass. Hair knotted. Mascara down to her jaw. A man's white shirt hanging off one shoulder, and under it a mark that pulsed against my shoulder blade in slow steady beats, and every beat was his.

Linnet was calling for him. She had not stopped. Even now, with the mate bond to Grant gone and the silence of it still ringing in my ribs, she was turned toward the door he had walked out of at some hour before dawn and calling for a man who had not left his name.

He had told me about the mark. It doesn't come off. It will tie you to me for the rest of your life.

I put my forehead against the glass and let myself breathe.

Then I washed my face. I found my dress, torn at the hem, and the heels with one strap broken. I wrapped the white shirt in the hotel's laundry bag and tied the top and put it in my clutch, because I could not make myself leave it.

* * *

The lobby of the Aldren was marble and low voices. A woman at the front desk looked at my dress and then very carefully did not look at it again. Across the lobby, Sloane sat on a low sofa with her legs crossed and a coffee in her hand. Grant stood behind her. She raised the cup an inch when she saw me. A man in a navy suit stood near the revolving door with a phone pressed to his ear and his back to me.

My father turned around.

Warren Hale was fifty-five and looked seventy. His hair had gone white in the last three years, around the time Judith moved into the house. He wore the navy suit he wore to every Council meeting, and he was holding a thermos.

I knew that thermos. It was green, with a dent near the base. My stepmother filled it every morning with the same blend of tea she had been making me for six years. For my nerves, she'd said. For my wolf. It tasted of chamomile and something faintly metallic, and I had never once been brave enough to say I disliked it.

"Maren." He took a step toward me, then stopped, as if unsure of the distance. "Sloane told me you weren't well."

"I'm fine, Dad."

"You didn't come home."

"I know."

"I called. Your phone—"

"It's cracked. I'm sorry."

He held out the thermos. "Judith sent this. She thought you'd want something warm."

I looked at it. I looked at him.

A man holding his daughter's tea in a hotel lobby, because his wife had told him to. A man who had not asked me what happened. Who would not ask. He stood there in his good suit, eyes anxious and dry, and what I felt was not anger. It was something heavier, and I did not have the word for it.

"Dad. What did you sign?"

He blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"The amended Accord. Sloane says you signed it."

The color left his face in a slow wave, from forehead to collar. For a moment I thought he might actually tell me the truth.

"It was a mistake," he said. "Her name. In the original. We had to correct the clerical—it was only a formality, Maren, the Council said it didn't matter which of you." He glanced toward the revolving door, and then, very quickly, back. "Judith said you would be happy. She said you wanted to be useful."

"She said that."

"Yes."

"And you believed her."

He said nothing.

I wanted to shout. I wanted to put the thermos through the glass. Instead I stood perfectly still and counted my breath. In. Out. In.

I said, "If I say no, what happens to you?"

He looked at his hands. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"Your mother would have known what to do," he said, so quietly I almost missed it. "She always did."

I had not heard anyone say my mother's name in that house in six years. I held onto that.

"Dad."

"There are things the Council could say. About the family. About you." He swallowed. "I don't know what the Council would do. I only know that I would not be able to stop them."

That was the answer. He didn't know about the photographs, and he had given me the most honest account of how afraid he was anyway.

I took the thermos from his hand. It was heavier than I expected. Full.

"I'll do it," I said.

"Maren."

"I'll go on Saturday." My voice did not shake. I was surprised by that, a little. "I'll marry him. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to fix it. I only want you to promise me one thing."

"Anything."

"Don't let Judith pour you any more tea."

His eyes went to the thermos. Then to mine. Something moved in his face, quick and confused, and was gone.

"I don't understand."

"I know."

I turned and went through the revolving door into the cold morning. The rain had stopped. The street shone. I walked half a block before I unscrewed the thermos and poured the entire contents into a storm drain.

It smelled of chamomile. And underneath it, sharp and green, was a note I had tasted every morning for six years and never once named.

My hand stopped moving.

Six years. Every morning.

I screwed the lid back on very slowly and stood there on the wet pavement while the city started its Monday around me. Cars. A bus. A woman with a stroller. Nobody looked at me.

A black sedan idled at the curb across the street. A courier in a dark suit stepped out of the back seat, crossed to me, and held out a thick cream envelope with a gold seal pressed into the wax.

"Miss Hale," he said. "With the compliments of the Crown."

I took it.

Inside was a card, engraved. One line in black ink. A signature beneath it, bold and slanting, the final stroke of the C slashing through the line.

Cassian Vale.

The card read: You are expected at Duskhollow on Saturday. Do not be late.

I read it twice. The courier had not moved. "Mr. Penn will collect you from your father's house at nine on Saturday morning," he said. "You are asked to bring nothing." He gave a short nod and returned to the car.

I lifted my eyes to it.

The rear window was tinted black. I could not see inside. But something warm moved behind my ribs and turned toward it, and Linnet, who had been calling for him all morning, went silent.

I stood on a wet sidewalk in a ruined dress with my stepmother's thermos in one hand and his signature in the other.

He did not know it was me. He had no idea. The woman he had held in the dark, whose name he had asked and whose face he had not seen clearly, was about to walk down his aisle.

And I could not tell him.