Her hand drops, and she steps back.
A long breath shakes out of me. “Alright,” I whisper.
She waits.
“There is a council meeting in two weeks. I will do it then.”
“The engagement?” she checks quietly. “Or the mark?”
I swallow. My throat is dry. “The mark. The engagement will be tomorrow.”
Her face doesn’t change. But the look in her eyes is different. Satisfaction? Relief? Grief? I cannot tell them apart.
“You are doing the right thing, Lucas.”
I can’t speak. She stretches up to kiss my cheek, and my wolf shrinks, not wanting her touch. He wants Sienna.
I stand at the window for a long time after she’s gone.
Then, suddenly, I move.
I don’t remember going down the stairs. I’m through the side door before I know what’s happening. The cold night air hits me in the face. My wolf is already pushing at my skin. Hot. Restless. Sick from what I have just agreed to. I storm through the gardens, past the oak tree where she likes to sit, beyond the edge of the mowed lawn.
I strip at the tree line. I leave my clothes where they fall. Shirt. Belt. Pants. Shoes. Everything I came out in, dropped in the moss. My wolf does not wait for me to fold things.
The shift takes me between one breath and the next. My wolf is already running by the time paws hit earth. He doesn’t know where he is going. He doesn’t care. He runs because stopping will mean feeling. We cannot feel this yet.
I run for hours. Until my lungs burn. Past when my paws hurt. The moon climbs high overhead and begins to fall again. I tear through brush I don’t recognize, ford a stream, cross a ridge I have not crossed since I was twenty years old and angry at my father about something I cannot remember now. My wolf flushes out a deer, but he doesn’t chase it. He doesn’t want meat. He wants to run until there is nothing left in him to run with.
I collapse onto my side in a stretch of moss somewhere deep in my own territory. My ribs are heaving.
Then, I sit up, throw my head back, and howl.
The cry comes out of me broken. Long. Ragged. Nothing like the voice of an alpha. It is the sound of grief.
I howl again. And again. I howl until my throat is raw and the birds have left the trees around me.
The forest swallows the sound and gives nothing back.
She will live, I tell my wolf. This way, she will live. She will live.
He does not care. He lies in the dirt with his ears pinned back and keens until the first gray light of dawn edges the sky.
I callthe meeting at nine. The announcement will happen at eleven.
By the time the council files into the room, I have drunk three cups of coffee, eaten nothing, and my face is set. My hands don’t shake. My voice will not shake.
Sienna walks in with her two assistants right behind her. She sits right next to Lydia, who smiles gently at her.
I don’t look at Sienna. I make myself not look at her. Out of the edge of my vision, I see dark hair. A blue blouse. A tablet held against her chest. That is as much as I allow myself. Any more, and I will break down in front of thirty people.
I wait for everyone to settle. I wait the beat that people expect.
“I have called you here,” I begin, “to announce my intention to take a mate. Within two weeks’ time.”
The room stops breathing.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sienna jerk. A small, involuntary movement. Her fingers tighten on the tablet.
