“It’s slightly off center.”
“No one is going to notice.”
“I’m going to notice.” She steps back, tilts her head, steps forward again. “There. Perfect.”
I look at myself in the mirror. The dress is simple—ivory, fitted through the waist, falling in soft folds to the floor. The veil is a length of sheer fabric pinned into my hair that Violet has adjusted six times. My reflection looks like someone who is about to get bonded to her mate in front of her entire pack and is trying very hard not to cry before she even gets to the ceremony.
“Don’t,” Violet says, reading my face. She points at me. “Do not cry right now. Your makeup is perfect, and I will not redo it.”
I laugh, which is better than the alternative. “I won’t.”
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The look you get when you’re about to insist you’re fine and then immediately not be fine.” She takes my hands, her grip firm and warm. Her eyes are bright with joy for me. “You’re allowed to be happy, Anne. Just happy. Nothing complicated today.”
“She’s right,” Sienna says from the bed, clearly enjoying being entirely unhelpful. “Also, you look beautiful. And I’m going to cry at the ceremony, so don’t look at me.”
I squeeze Violet’s hands. She’s right. I know she’s right. There is nothing complicated about today.
The clearing has been transformed.
I knew it would be. I planned it, spent two weeks deciding on flowers and candles and the exact placement of ribbons through the trees. But seeing it in the golden evening light, actually walking toward it on Violet’s arm, is different from planning it on paper.
White flowers line both sides of the stone pathway. Candles burn inside glass orbs hung from branches, swaying gently, and the ribbons catch the light and move in the breeze. The whole clearing glows, as warm and soft as a held breath.
The pack is assembled on both sides of the path.
I see faces I know from the office, from years of morning greetings at the coffee machine and shared lunches and the quiet, daily fabric of working alongside people for so long, they become like family without you quite noticing.
Priya from accounting, who cried when I told her, who asked four times what she could bring to the reception and was finally told firmly that she could bring herself.
Marcus from the fourth floor, who shook my hand and looked so genuinely pleased, I had to smile.
Half a dozen others who know nothing about the attack, nothing about the Covenant, nothing about what these past months actually were. Who simply knew that Anne fromadministration had found her mate and was happy, and that was enough for them to show up in their good clothes on a Tuesday evening and cheer.
I am glad they don’t know. I want today to be exactly this. Ordinary joy, simple and straightforward, with no shadow of what it cost to get here falling across the light.
Tonight is just this. There will be time for the rest of it later.
I see Kain, and the rest of it falls away entirely.
He is standing at the end of the pathway in dark, ceremonial attire, watching me with an expression I have no proper name for—beyond fondness, beyond want, the expression of a man who has come a very long way to get to this exact moment and knows precisely how valuable it is. He looks like himself. He looks like the boy from the photograph on my desk and also nothing like him, and both things at once are almost too much.
He smiles when he sees my face, and I force myself not to cry.
The walk down the pathway is both very long and over immediately. Kain takes my hands when I reach him; his grip is steady and warm, the bent, gold ring solid on my finger where I hold on. He looks at me like there is no one else in this clearing. Like there is no one else anywhere in the world.
“Hi,” I manage.
“Hi.” His thumbs trace circles on the backs of my hands. “You look beautiful.”
I cannot say anything to this. I just hold on tighter.
The officiant begins. I listen to the traditional words, the old language of pack bonding that I have heard at ceremonies since I was small, familiar as a song I know by heart. Through our bond, I can feel Kain clearly, steady and full and entirely certain.
When it is time for the vows, I say mine and mean every word of them. I feel him mean his in return, the bond carrying the truth of them back to me so there is no room for doubt.
