Lucas’s hand sits at the small of my back as we walk, warm through the silk of my blouse. My pulse takes too much notice of it.
I pretend it doesn’t.
The corridor ends at the door to the breakfast room, and the chatter inside dies down the moment we cross the threshold. Heads swivel to look at us. A pack council member I recognize from the welcome party sets his cup down. Monroe is standing by the sideboard. Two of the pack elders, who I gather rarely turn up to anything before noon, are present and looking expectant. Lydia is seated at the far end of the long table, her hands folded around a coffee cup, her face composed in the warm, professional expression I have watched her wear for just about a month now.
“A quick meeting,” Lucas murmured to me outside the door. Half the senior people in this house are here. He needs to do this now.
I want to be anywhere else.
The black mark on my collarbone hums against the fabric of my blouse. Lucas’s mating bite at the side of my throat is covered by the high collar I chose this morning with shaking fingers. The bond between us is so loud in my chest, I can barely hear my own thoughts.
Lucas pulls a chair out for me. I sit. He does not.
He stands behind me with one hand on the high back of the chair and waits until every face in the room has turned toward him. Then, he speaks without preamble.
“I’ll keep this short. You are entitled to hear it from me first, before the rest of the household finds out.” A pause. His thumb moves once on the wood beside my shoulder. “Sienna is my fated mate. We are mated, as of a couple nights ago. I am announcing it now.”
The silence that drops is not the silence I expected.
I had braced for a flinch. A gasp. Some tiny yet audible breaking of the assumption everyone in this room has been working under since the day I arrived. None of that happens. There is a beat in which people simply rearrange their faces, and then, someone at the far end of the table breathes out quietly.
Lucas keeps going. “I want to address Lydia directly, not only because she is in the room but also because she deserves better than rumors. Lydia and I have been friends since we were children. When my father died, I leaned on her. Recently, when I felt the responsibilities of my position pressing harder than they should, I went to her and asked her to be my luna.” His voice does not waver. “I asked her because I believed that was what the pack expected of me. But it was the wrong thing to do. Lydia and I discussed it together, and we agreed that we are better as we have always been: friends. The choice I’m making now is the one I should have made from the start.”
His hand lifts off the chair and settles on my shoulder. “I choose my own happiness. I’m not going to apologize for it.”
The silence that follows does not break for several seconds. Cups stay where they are. A spoon finishes its slow turn against the inside of someone’s cup and is set down. I feel every face in the room recalibrating around what was just said, and I have no idea which way the recalibration is going to go.
Lydia is the one who speaks first. She sets her coffee down without sound, and then she rises, a warm smile on her lips. “Welcome to Silvercrest Pack, Sienna.”
It feels like the entire breakfast room exhales at once.
The pack elder closest to me, a woman with iron-colored hair, lifts her cup in my direction and follows Lydia’s lead. “Welcome, Luna.”
Monroe beams at me. The council member who set his cup down earlier picks it back up and salutes me with it. A younger member of the household I do not know by name says “congratulations” to Lucas in a voice that sounds genuinely pleased.
There is an awkwardness running underneath all of it, though. The pack is rearranging twenty years of assumption in real time. But it is not the cold reception I had braced for in the corridor outside the door. Lydia gave them permission to approve of me with one sentence, and they are taking it.
I don’t quite know what to do with that.
I focus on my plate. A piece of toast I do not remember asking for appears on it. Lucas’s palm stays on my shoulder until he sits down beside me, and then he finds my knee under the table and rests his hand there. He does not move it for the rest of the meal.
The conversation finds new rails. Plans for an announcement to the wider pack. A celebration to be arranged. Someone teases Lucas about the color of his shirt today, dark blue, and he answers without looking up from his eggs.
The breakfast lasts twenty minutes. By the end of it, I have eaten nothing, and Lucas has noticed.
People drift out in pairs. I push my chair back and start to follow the slow current toward the door, and that’s when Lydia’s voice finds me again.
“Sienna. A moment.”
I turn.
She has stopped near my chair, her tablet pressed against her chest, the morning light from the window behind her. Her smile is still warm, but there is pain in her eyes that she is not quite managing to conceal.
I cross back to her. The other guests filter past us. Lucas is still in the room, behind me, talking to Monroe about some logistics. I feel his attention shift toward me without him turning his head.
“I wanted to say it properly,” Lydia begins, quieter now. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
