6. Waiting Under Fading Light

Hannah learned to count days by the way the light changed across the hearthstone in Crimson Howl’s great hall - thin and blue the first morning, then slanting warmer, then finally the hard, white glare that made every mote of dust look like a thing that belonged to someone else. A week had thinned and coiled itself into that light, and Marcus was always the absence threaded through it: the name tucked against her ribs when she slept, the ache she wore like a second skin. She wanted, with a hunger that made her stomach hollow, to be near him, to press her palm to the place where the bond hummed and find him steady on the other side. But protocol had clipped her wings. The Alpha’s refusal to meet hung between them like iron.

She moved through the hall with the practiced stillness of a guest who knew how to be invisible. Her father’s scent clung to her cloak; the lavender square he’d given her lay folded into her palm whenever the pull became too loud. The keep smelled of boiled herbs and smoke, of wool and damp fur - a scent that should have been ordinary, except every ordinary thing here thinned into significance because it was the air Marcus would have breathed.

It was in the kitchens, where heat and voices collided into clatter and spice, that she heard the whispering: two omegas bent close over a steaming pot, their words quick and soft like mice. She almost didn’t stop - politeness, training - but the syllables snagged her like a hook.

“ - binding next moon,” one said, fingers worrying at a rag. “Alpha’s made it clear. The Beta’s to be honored in the ceremony.”

Hannah’s hands tightened around the scent cloth until the fabric creased beneath her nails. Her brain tried to scramble for context. Bonding ceremony. Honor for the Beta. The omegas’ voices were careful, threaded with the kind of reverence that made her think of ceremonies she hadn’t been allowed to see, of rites performed with the market of a pack watching.

“What about the guest?” the other omega asked, breath clouding in the cold. “Isn’t the Beta already - ”

“Claimed by the Howel’s pact,” the first replied. “But the Alpha wants the public solemning. He calls it a strengthening - keeps enemies from sniffing loose threads.” Her tone was almost apologetic, as if the politics were a weight they had to shoulder. “They’ll call Marcus before the moon, maybe sooner.”

The world tilted. Bonding ceremony. Public. Marcus - her Marcus - called before the moon. Hannah felt the pull of the bond spike into something sharp and dizzying, a tide rising too quickly. A ceremony could mean release, or it could mean a claim that tied him somewhere she couldn’t reach. It could be the Alpha’s way of making the wound corporate, of turning what was theirs into something she could no longer touch.

She stepped closer without meaning to, her footstep giving her away. The omegas glanced up, eyes sliding past her like they’d expected a shadow, not a woman in spite of herself. Hannah forced a smile that felt like a cracked shield.

“You’ve got this,” she whispered to herself, borrowing the steadying phrase her father had used. It didn’t make the knot in her chest less tight, but it was a promise she could grit her teeth around. Her next steps were smaller, tactical: find the Alpha, ask for an audience, press for Marcus’s name to be spoken where decisions were made. The rules were real; she couldn’t throw herself across the line without consequence. But the wire between them had become a line on a map, and she could trace it, if she moved with care.

Steam fogged the windows. Outside, the banners of Crimson Howl snapped in a wind that smelled faintly of iron. Inside, words of a ceremony breathed possibility and threat into the same space. Hannah folded the scent cloth to her chest and let the pull of Marcus be the compass it had always been. She would not be a guest to be shuffled away. She would find a way to stand in whatever circle they called him into - and if the Alpha tried to make a claim that ignored the truth between her and Marcus, she would be ready to answer.