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Eleanor nodded. “No point fretting now. We put in the work, now we wait.” But she fretted. She could see how her happiness with Blake could be perceived as an advantage of the blood oath, but she also knew how much pain they’d endured at the beginning. She couldn’t imagine others getting put through the same thing. They had to win.
“We wait. Hopefully, if all goes well, Xander will have the leverage to do the same in your old pack. Your elders are more difficult than mine, though. But I think we can put pressure on them to see reason too.”
They spent the rest of the day together, going through their argument and perfecting their lines. It was Blake’s pack, so he was going to be the speaker. Eleanor trusted him to bring it home, and told him as much.
When they were certain that there was nothing else to add, they went up, showered, changed, and handed their baby into the care of both her grandmothers before leaving for the general pack meeting.
The town hall building was buzzing with activity when they arrived, and they had to weave past dozens of people to get to their seats in front of the raised dais.
“It’s a complete circus!” Eleanor exclaimed when she settled into her seat.
Blake glanced around. “General meetings usually are. There’s a bunch of matters to be discussed, and we’ll probably wait a while before our petition comes up.”
“Well, isn’t that just great?” Eleanor watched as various petitions were raised and votes were taken. Many of the petitions seemed pretty trivial and mundane, but she understood that this was what passed for government in wolf communities.
She wished she’d listened more when Xander had tried to show her how things worked among wolves. Her anxiety had drained, and now she was just terribly bored.
She’d started to doze off when she heard the chief elder say, “Petition by Blake and Eleanor Bennett to break the blood oath arrangement between Yellow Cicada and Moon Shadow.”
She sat up in her seat and squeezed Blake’s hand as he got up. He nodded at the elders, smiled at a few faces in the crowd, and pointed at a few others. Eleanor was amazed by how easily he charmed the entire room before he’d even spoken a single word.
She started to believe that it was possible. As he spoke, she noticed the crowd grow still, hanging on every word he spoke. He was a performer to the bone, and she couldn’t imagine anyone who was listening to him voting against him.
He spoke about how hard their marriage had been at first, spoke about how it had been unfair for them to be thrown together without a say in the matter. He spoke about how he’d almost gotten killed by his own friend, and how Eleanor’s pregnancy had saved his friendship with his best friend, his marriage, and probably his life.
“This is serious,” Blake said emotionally, and Eleanor recognized that he was entering the closing part of his statement.
“These are people’s lives we are messing with. Now, I’m all for honoring the wishes of our ancestors long dead. But I promise, if you asked me to choose between honoring the dead and protecting the living, I’d always choose to look after the living. Thank you.”
He returned to his seat, and Eleanor beamed at him, her eyes wet with tears. The entire hall was as silent as death, as if everyone was afraid to speak. Isabel was looking at Blake and smiling proudly at him. Even Blake’s father looked like he was holding back tears.
The foreman seemed to remember his duty and banged his gavel. “Alpha Blake, we thank you for that powerful statement. We sympathize with you for the troubles you faced in your union, but we do feel that scrapping such a tradition sets a bad precedent.”
“Oh, speak for yourself, Jonathan,” Isabel snapped angrily. “Easy for you to say when you’re not the one affected. Well, I say we take a vote.”
Eleanor had not expected the uproar, but the entire hall erupted into a heated debate. Some were in support, while several were against Blake’s proposed petition.
The foreman banged his gavel loudly and screamed for quiet. When the noise was a bit subdued, he turned to Blake and said, “Alpha Blake, I would be lying if I say I’m not shocked by your petition. You’re happily married! Isn’t your bond to your wife proof that the arranged marriage tradition is powerful and just?”
Eleanor made to speak but Blake squeezed her thigh and stood up. “It was nothing but a lucky coincidence that we turned out to be true mates. Regardless, it’s pointless to force strangers to get married for the sake of respecting a custom.”
“Looks to me like it was way more than a coincidence,” said some other elder that Eleanor did not remember. That sparked another round of rowdy debate in the crowd, with neither side refusing to back down, despite how many times the foreman banged his gavel.
Eleanor looked around the room in silence. She watched the elders as they deliberated among themselves. From the set of their faces, she knew that if it went to a vote now, they would lose.
She searched her mind for something, anything she could get out of this. She blanked out the noise in the background and shut her eyes. What would have made the arranged marriage easier for her? What would she have wanted done differently?
She opened her eyes, got up and walked to the front of the dais. She stood patiently in front of the elders and slowly, the noise receded in the room.
Blake walked up to meet his wife, but he remained silent. He was only there to support. He had tried. He had failed. Now, it was her turn, and she appreciated him for doing that.
“Mrs. Bennett?” the foreman said. “You’d like to add something to what your husband has already said?”
“What about if we arrive at a compromise? We didn’t mean to cause such a division among such peaceful and loving folk. Forcing this issue further has no merit I can think of. No matter the outcome of the vote, there would be no winners here.
“So, I suggest we meet in the middle. This pact is activated every tenth generation, right? So, we keep the tradition. But instead of an out and out marriage like Blake and I had, we could introduce a trial period.
“Moving forward, all couples could try living together for a month before deciding whether they want to get married or not. That way, you protect your tradition, and you also give people a chance to know their potential spouses.”
