Chapter Five
Sana
The Council convened to review our petition nine days later, and it went wrong in the most elegant way possible, which meant Darius.
Alpha Darius of Jademoor was the kind of handsome that comes with a warranty you suspect is void.
He smiled constantly, warmly, at everyone .
He had been smiling at me across Council chambers since I had become Luna, and I had spent years telling myself I was uncharitable for wanting to check my pockets every time he did it.
He rose when our petition was read, smiling, and I felt Zaden go still beside me like a drawn bow.
"A joyous match," Darius said. "The bond honored after all. The feud healed. Truly the Moon is a poet."
He let the warmth hang in the air, then turned to Alric with just the right note of reluctance, a man forced by conscience to be unkind.
"And yet, Alpha Alric, the Council must be certain.
Forgive me. We all witnessed the rejection.
Public, unambiguous, and to my knowledge unprecedented before this body.
Now, mere weeks later, with a dissolution pending and a spring at stake, we are asked to believe in a love match. "
He spread his hands. "The law is clear. Political matings between feuding packs are forbidden, for excellent reasons written in sixty years of blood.
If this bond is embraced truly, the Council should rejoice.
If it is theater, the Council is being used, and Clawfore's dissolution is being obstructed by fraud. "
"What are you proposing, Darius?" Alric asked.
"Verification," Darius said gently. "Nothing cruel.
Let the mated pair reside together at Clawfore until the Blood Moon ceremony, openly, as true mates do.
Let the Council's observers visit freely.
If the bond is genuine, this costs them nothing but privacy.
If it is fraud, it will show. Fraud always shows.
One can hold a mask for an evening, but not for nine weeks, not in one's own den. "
I kept my face delighted, because delight was the only safe thing on it, while underneath I did rapid and unpleasant math. Nine weeks. One roof. Observers. A man who had sworn never to so much as smile at me, performing devotion for an audience trained to smell lies.
"Clawfore welcomes the Council's observers," I said warmly. "We have nothing to hide and excellent guest rooms."
"Nightsteel agrees," Zaden said, in the tone of a man agreeing to be buried.
"Wonderful," Darius said, and his smile found me and rested there, soft as a hand on the back of the neck. "I look forward to visiting myself. I do so love Clawfore in autumn."
Afterward, in the corridor, Zaden walked beside me in a silence with weather inside it. I waited until we were past the last of the Council guards.
"He knows," I said quietly.
"He suspects," Zaden said. "It isn't the same thing. He can't prove a private arrangement."
“He doesn’t have to prove it to know what it means,” I said.
“Walk it through. The consolidation law gives an adjacent pair exactly one lawful shape, a true bond with an abdication owed after. The political kind is forbidden outright for packs like ours. So our petition only stands while the Council believes the bond is embraced. The moment anyone proves it’s contract instead of bond, we’re not just frauds, Zaden, we’re the forbidden kind of mating, the land grab kind, and dissolution stops being Clawfore’s sentence and becomes Clawfore’s mercy. ”
"He doesn't need proof. He needs nine weeks and one mistake," I added. "He just moved us onto a stage and gave himself a front row seat, and he did it smiling, and Alric thanked him for it. I told you he was better at this than you."
"You also told me I scowl when I lie," he said. "Nine weeks of observers, Luna. You had better hope I learn to lie with my face or you had better hope they're blind."
"Oh, no," I said. "Hope is not a strategy. We're going to rehearse."
He stopped walking.
"Rehearse?" he said.
"You're going to learn to look at me like you love me," I said, "even if it takes every evening of nine weeks, because four hundred wolves are riding on your face, Zaden Nightsteel, and right now your face says I owe it money."
"This face agreed to a contract," he said. "Nobody mentioned acting."
"The acting was implicit," I said. "It was in the clause about convincing the Council. I'd offer to make it easy on you, but I promised not to smile at you in private, so we'll just have to suffer."
I started walking again, and after a moment I heard him follow, and I will take it to my grave that the sound of his footsteps falling in beside mine loosened something under my ribs, hook and line, that had been pulled tight since the Council hall.
The bond did not care about contracts. The bond was an idiot. I had nine weeks to make sure I didn't become one too.