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“Table seven goes east. The flower garlands need to be hung from the altar to the eastern oak, not the western, Martha’s crew keeps getting them backwards, and someone needs to tell Marcus that the ceremonial cloth goes under the bowls, not over them. He’s been doing it wrong for six years.”

“Got it.” Jasmin presses the radio to her lips. “Marcus. The cloth goes under. Six years, Marcus. Six years.”

I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing.

We work. Luna Selena directs, Jasmin handles the radio, and I keep the clipboard and timeline.

By six, the clearing is unrecognizable.

I stand at the edge of the tree line with Jasmin on one side and Luna Selena on the other, and the three of us just, stop. The clipboard hangs from my fingers, forgotten. The radio in Jasmin’s hand has gone silent. Even Luna Selena, who has been directing this operation with the precision of a general for four hours, goes quiet.

The oak canopy is strung with silver lanterns, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, hanging from the branches like luminous fruit, their light pooling on the packed earth below in overlapping circles of warm amber. Flower garlands cascade from the altar to the eastern oak in rivers of white and pale blue, moonflowers, jasmine, something I don’t recognize that catches the light like spun glass.

*****

The stone altar at the center glows under the lantern light, the silver bowl catching every flame and throwing it back in fractured shards across the clearing. Tables ring the perimeter, twenty of them, maybe thirty, draped in white linen and set with silver flatware that winks like something alive. The bonfire pit is stacked but unlit, a pyramid of split cedar waiting for the match.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathe.

“It’s what it’s supposed to look like,” Luna Selena says, and the pride in her voice is so quiet it’s almost shy. “Every full moon. Every ceremony. This is what Silver Moon does.”

Jasmin’s hand finds my elbow. Her fingers are warm, steady, the particular grip of a woman who has decided you’re hers and isn’t interested in negotiating about it. She tells stories about her pups with her whole body, hands flying, eyes bright, the particular animation of a woman who loves her children the way other people love breathing.

“Ready?” she asks me.

“No,” I say honestly.

“Good.” She squeezes my arm. “Me neither. We’ll do it scared.”

Darian finds me at six fifteen wearing dark slacks and the charcoal button down Luna Selena sent over yesterday.

“You clean up,” I tell him.

“You don’t look so bad yourself.” His hand finds the small of my back, and the warmth of it travels up my spine like a current. “Where are the pups?”

“With Martha. She’s feeding them. Again.”

“Of course she is.”

Damian and Darlene come running from the food tables. Darlene's hair is miraculously contained in a ponytail, and she's wearing the green dress Luna Selena picked out. Damian's white shirt is tucked neatly into dark slacks, his hair combed like he's decided tonight is Important.

“You look beautiful, Mommy,” Darlene says, launching herself at my knees.

“You look beautiful, baby.” I crouch, wincing at the pull in my healing shoulder, and kiss the top of her head. “Both of you. Absolutely beautiful.”

Damian steps forward and takes my hand. His grip is tight. Not nervous. Possessive.

“Daddy’s here,” Damian says, not looking at Darian. Looking past him. At the wolves streaming through the tree line.

The bond shifts. I feel it before I see it, the hum behind my sternum thickening, warming, the individual heartbeats of Five thousand and forty seven wolves pressing closer as they cross the threshold of the ceremonial field. My wolf stirs. In recognition. The way a muscle remembers a movement it hasn’t performed in years.

“Darlene.” I crouch again. “Stay close to Daddy, okay? Damian, you too. We’re going to be introduced after the Gamma ceremony.”

“Gamma ceremony,” Damian repeats. His eyes are fixed on the altar. “That’s the third in command.”

“That’s Joshua,” I say. “Justin’s father. The one who helped find us.”

Damian’s jaw sets. “He’s good,” Damian says. Not a question. A conclusion.