Chapter Three
Sana
By the end of the second week, the petitions had stopped coming, and the withdrawals had started.
I sat at my father's desk, which I still could not think of as my desk, and read the latest one aloud to Rose, who was sprawled across the window seat eating the honey cakes she had allegedly brought for me.
"Alpha Therik of the Pineclaw regrets that circumstances compel him to withdraw his petition for the Luna's hand," I read. "He wishes the Luna every happiness and the Moon's own blessing in her search."
"That's the seventh," Rose said, around a mouthful of cake.
"Eighth," I said. "Alpha Jarek withdrew yesterday by messenger because he didn't have the spine to write it down."
"What was his excuse?" she asked.
"His mother is ill," I said.
"His mother breeds war hounds and once arm wrestled my uncle into a creek," Rose said. "That woman has never been ill in her life. She frightens illness."
"They're not even pretending well anymore.
" I set the letter down on the stack of letters exactly like it.
"It's the bond, Rose. Every wolf in that hall felt it snap into place.
Nobody wants a Luna whose wolf belongs to Zaden Nightsteel.
They look at me and they see his mark on me, even rejected.
Especially rejected. I'm a cursed bride now.
I'm a song they'll sing in twenty years about the Moon's bad jokes. "
"You're not cursed," Rose said.
"My fated mate took one look at me and refused me in front of the entire Council," I said. "If that's luck, I'd rather be cursed. Cursed at least sounds interesting."
The smile slipped while I said it. I let it, because it was only Rose, and Rose was the one person left alive who was allowed to see underneath.
She put down the honey cake, which from Rose was the equivalent of a declaration of war, and came and sat on the edge of the desk.
"How bad is it?" she asked. "The bond. Truly?"
"It aches," I said. "All the time. It's like a hook under my ribs with a line running west, and somebody on the other end occasionally pulls.
My wolf cries at night. I tell her to stop and she doesn't listen, because she's me, and I have never once in my life stopped doing anything I was told to stop doing. "
"And during the day?" she asked.
"During the day I'm fine," I said, and I put the smile back on to show her. "See? Fine."
"You're doing the thing," Rose said.
"There's no thing," I said.
"There's a thing," she said. "You've been doing it since your father died.
You shine at people so they won't look too closely.
It works on everyone, you know. The whole pack thinks their Luna is made of morning light.
The elders think you're too cheerful to be dangerous, which is the only reason Nylah hasn't moved against you openly yet.
But I've known you since we were six, Sana Clawfore, and I watched you learn to do it, and I know what it costs. "
I looked at my best friend, and for a moment I let her see all of it, the grief and the fear and the hook under my ribs, and her eyes went bright with tears, which was unacceptable, so I took her hand and squeezed it and put us both back together.
"The pack needs morning light," I said. "So that's what I am. We can fall apart after the Blood Moon. I'll schedule it. We'll fall apart together, with wine."
"You can't charm this one, Sana," she said softly.
"Eight withdrawals. The rest will follow.
There isn't an Alpha in the region who will mate a rejected bond, and in eleven weeks Alric dissolves Clawfore and hands our wolves out like party favors.
Nylah is already writing letters to Jademoor. I've seen the courier."
"I know," I said.
"Then what are we going to do?" she asked.
I stood up and walked to the window. Below, the village was going about its evening, lamps coming on, pups being called in, old Odell sitting on her porch knitting something enormous and shapeless and glaring at passersby with great affection.
Four hundred wolves. My wolves. My father had died for them and my brother had died for them and they trusted me to find a way, because I had spent my whole life teaching them that the sun comes up.
There was exactly one Alpha in the region whose petition could not be poisoned by the bond. The one who held the other end of it.
"Sana," Rose said slowly, reading my face, because she always could. "No."
"He needs the Springline," I said. "He's been bleeding for it for years.
Everyone thinks Nightsteel wants it for pride, but nobody bleeds that long for pride.
He wants something in that land, wants it badly, and if Clawfore dissolves he has to fight three other packs in Council chambers for the pieces.
Or he can have access guaranteed with a signature. Mine."
"He rejected you in front of the entire Council," Rose said. "He humiliated you."
"Yes," I said. "And think about who courted me, Rose.
Twelve Alphas, every one of them from the far ranges.
Not one bordering pack sent a petition, because not one bordering pack could.
The old consolidation law forbids it. No pair may hold two territories that share a border, and a political mating between adjacent packs is barred outright, which is the only reason Darius of Jademoor hasn't been at my door with flowers and a land survey.
The law was written to stop exactly him.
So the distant Alphas court me, and the rejection poisons all of them, and that leaves one wolf in the world the rejection can't touch, and he happens to live next door, and now I'm going to walk into his territory and offer him the thing he wants most in the world, attached to the woman he wants least, and he's going to say yes, because he's a survivor, and survivors do math. "
"If the law bars adjacent packs," Rose said, "then it bars him too."
"It bars political matings," I said. "It can't bar a true bond.
The Moon outranks the Council and they've never forgiven the Moon for it.
A bonded pair on adjacent lands is allowed with one cure attached.
One of the two abdicates, in due session, and the balance holds.
The whole region watched our bond ignite, Rose.
We're the one adjacent pair alive with a lawful door, and all we have to do is walk through it pretending the bond is embraced, and let the Council assume the abdication gets sorted after the Blood Moon. "
"And when they come to sort it?" she asked.
"Then Clawfore is already saved and we argue about thrones from inside a standing pack instead of a dissolved one," I said. "One cliff at a time."
I turned around and smiled at her, and this one was real, and I could tell it frightened her a little, because my real smiles always did. "A mating of pure politics. On paper. No bond, no love, separate lives. He gets the spring. I get an Alpha. Clawfore lives."
"He'll laugh at you," Rose said.
"He doesn't laugh," I said. "I've checked. It's not one of his three expressions."
"He could kill you," she said. "You'd be alone on Nightsteel land. Sixty years, Sana. Their wolves have killed ours and ours have killed theirs, and you want to walk in there alone and negotiate with the grumpiest Alpha on the continent."
"He won't hurt me," I said, and I knew it was true the moment I said it, knew it through the hook under my ribs and the line running west. "He can't. That's the beautiful, terrible joke of it, Rose.
He rejected the bond, but the bond didn't reject him.
His wolf won't let him touch me. I felt it when our hands met.
Whatever else that man is, he's mine, and his teeth will never reach me. "
Rose stared at me for a long moment, and then she picked her honey cake back up and bit into it with the air of a woman fortifying herself for disaster.
"I'm coming with you as far as the border," she said.
"Obviously," I said.
"And if he says no?" she asked.
I looked back out the window at my four hundred lamps coming on in the dusk.
"He won't say no," I said. "I'm going to be the best bad decision that man has ever made."