Tearing-a

Nobody tells you the rejection has a sound.

They tell you plenty about the bond. The elders had been telling us since we were small enough to sit cross-legged on the pack-house floor, and they always said it with that soft, far-off look old wolves get when they talk about love. It clicks, they said. Two halves, one whole. You'll know it the way you know your own name.

Nobody mentioned what it sounds like when it goes the other way. It sounds like wet canvas ripping. I heard it from the inside, somewhere behind my sternum, and for one strange second I thought someone had cut me open and I just hadn't noticed yet.

But I'm skipping ahead. Let me go back to the morning, when I still thought I was about to be happy.

The Claiming was held every autumn on the night of the full moon, in the big clearing behind the pack house where the grass never grew because too many boots had worn it down to packed dirt. The whole pack came. Three hundred people, give or take, standing in a loose ring with torches, the little kids up on their fathers' shoulders. The Alpha's heir stood in the middle and named his mate. That was the tradition. The moon watched, the elders blessed it, and the pack cheered.

Everyone already knew who Garrick would name.

Everyone except me, I suppose, because everyone thought they knew, and they were wrong.

Two months earlier, at the harvest fire, I'd tripped over a root carrying a tray of cider cups. Garrick caught my wrist to steady me. That was all. A hand on a wrist. And the whole world went quiet and gold, and something in my chest turned over like a key in a lock, and I looked up and saw his face doing exactly what mine was doing.

Fated. Mine. Ours.

He'd let go of me so fast the tray hit the ground.

Later that night he found me behind the granary. He kept looking over his shoulder while he talked. He said it was a lot to take in. He said we should keep it quiet until the Claiming, so it could be done properly, in front of the pack, the way it should be. He said, "Just trust me, Sloane."

And then he kissed me. Once, quick, a little clumsy, his hand shaking against my jaw.

I had never been kissed before. I was twenty-two years old, the girl nobody looked at, the one people apologized to when they bumped into her, and Garrick Hale, the Alpha's son, had kissed me behind a granary and told me to trust him.

So I did. For two months I walked around with a secret tucked under my ribs like a warm stone. I stopped flinching when people spoke to me. I let myself picture things. A cabin of my own. Someone to come home to. Someone who'd look up when I walked in.

I wore my mother's green dress to the Claiming. It was too long for me, and I'd taken up the hem myself the night before, sitting on my bed with a needle and a cheap lamp, humming under my breath. Under the collar, on a leather cord, I wore the little black stone she'd given me when I was seven. It was smooth as a river pebble and always a bit warmer than it should have been. She died two years later, and the stone was the one thing of hers I kept my hands on when everything else got put in boxes.

I touched it before I walked out. For luck.

That's how stupid I was. I touched a rock for luck

The clearing smelled of pine smoke and cold air and three hundred people trying to look calm. I took my place at the edge of the ring, where I always stood. My father was a few yards down, his arms folded, jaw working like he was chewing something bitter. He didn't look at me. He hadn't really looked at me in years, not since Chloe's wolf came in silver and mine, according to everyone, didn't come in at all.

Chloe stood near the middle, ten feet from where Garrick would be. She was wearing white, and her hair was braided with silver ribbon, and she looked like something you'd put on a wedding cake. She caught my eye and gave me a small, sweet, sisterly smile.

I smiled back. God help me, I smiled back.

Elder Rowan tapped his staff against the ground three times, and the clearing went quiet. He was an old man with a face like folded paper and pale eyes that never seemed to blink at the right moments. He said the words about the moon and the pack and the sacred bond, and I stopped listening because my heart was going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

Then Garrick stepped into the center of the ring.

He looked good. That's the awful part. He'd combed his hair back and put on the dark blue coat with the silver buttons, the Alpha-heir coat, and he stood the way his father stood, shoulders wide, chin lifted. He scanned the crowd. His eyes passed over me and did not stop.

Something small and cold dropped in my stomach.

"Pack of Moonstone," he said. His voice carried well. He'd practiced. "Tonight the moon has shown me the one I was born to stand beside. The one I'll lead with."

Look at me,

I thought. Just look at me.

"Sloane Ashcroft."