I exhale hard enough to send a pink sugar crystal skittering across the counter. “I’ll think about it,” I say finally, which is my very polite way of shutting down the conversation. And my even politer way of sayingnot a snowball’s chance in hell.
It’s been two days and approximately two dozen cookies eaten since Gran left for the Fated Lights Festival. I’m cocooned under a mountain of blankets, armed with another plate of pink-frosted cookies and a mug of cocoa so thick and sweet it could qualify as pudding.
The movie playing on my laptop is aggressively cheerful—fake snow, fake love, fake conflict. I don’t want anything deep right now. I want the safe version of happily ever after. The one with no risk, no heartbreak, and a guarantee that everything works out by the ninety-minute mark.
The radiator hisses as icy snowflakes tap against the window. I take a deep breath and exhale, blowing through the steam of my cocoa. “The Winter Solstice can keep its cosmic light show and fated mates. I am good without them.”
Gran’s ringtone pierces the quiet, a chiming mash-up of bells and faint fox calls that Max, Libby and I made for her two Solstices ago back when I wasn’t bitter and love didn’t make me nauseous.
I consider letting it go to voicemail, but no one ghosts Gran on Winter Solstice. Not if they want to live to New Year’s.
I swipe to answer. “Emme’s anti-Solstice hotline.”
“Emmeline, I—” The line crackles. Reception at the peak of the mountain is terrible at best.
“Gran? You’re breaking up.”
More static, a jumble of cut off words. Then, faint but unmistakable, “Honey cakes!”
I blink. “Honey cakes?”
Every year, Gran brings the honey cakes for the newly bound to share after the mate announcements. It’s tradition—sugary, sticky symbolism for the sweetness that’s supposed to last a lifetime.
Skipping the honey cakes would basically be the non-shifter equivalent of forgetting the wedding cake. Total scandal. Gran’s brought them every year since before I was born, and once she’s gone, it’ll be my turn to carry the torch. Or, I guess, the honey cakes.
“I forgot them!” she yells, though the line distorts her voice and she sounds like a robot. “Need you…bring them…tradition!”
I sit straight up and nearly slosh hot cocoa across my nest of blankets.
“No.” I shake my head and glance out the window where the snow blurs the street outside into watercolors. “Absolutely not.”
“Honey cakes…tradition!” The garbled words come again.
Chewing my lower lip, I stare at my reflection in the window—messy bun, pink sweater, a cocoa mustache dotting my upper lip. “Max, or…or Libby. What about them? They can come get the cakes, right?”
Even as I say it, I know it’s pointless. Max is on patrol with the Northern pack, and Libby’s expecting her first baby any day now. She can barely waddle, let alone navigate a snowmobile byherself through the forest. I’m grasping at excuses, and both of us know it.
“You’re the only one?—”
There’s a crackle of static, a few garbled syllables that might be “hurry” and “come quick,” and then the call drops completely.
“Gran? Hello?”
No response.
“Giant sugary ball sacs,” I curse, kicking myself free of the blanket burrito.
I put my cocoa in the fridge and shove the remaining cookies into a tin before tossing them into my bag along with pastel-colored marshmallows and a container of pink frosting in case I need a quick sugar pick me up to get through this trek to the top of the mountain. Then I start layering up: pink glittered puffer coat, matching gloves, and sequined boots. No need to go overboard with the whole snowsuit getup. I’ll be back on my couch before I know it.
By the time I grab the tin of honey cakes from Gran’s kitchen and make it back to the garage, the snow’s picked up a bit, falling in soft, white flurries.
“I’ll drop these off,” I mutter, glancing up at the glowing fairy lights bordering my apartment window, “and be back long before the Elders even think about announcing mated pairs.”
Snowflakes speckle my goggles while I guide the snowmobile along the frozen river’s edge, engine humming beneath me as the trail winds higher up the mountain. Just over that ridge and through the pines is the clearing where the Fated Lights Festival is held. Every pack from the Northern Hemisphere will be there, basking in fate’s glow like it’s not one big cosmic matchmaking circus.
“How am I already this jaded?” I mutter, gripping the handlebars tighter. “Aren’t I supposed to get at least ten more years before I start hating love?”
The river curves away, the pines thinning as I climb higher. My pulse thrums with the steady rhythm of the snowmobile’s growl. I’ve already made it most of the way up when the sky lets go.
