27. Lynn
— ? —
Lynn
The compound has gone insane.
“Miss Crowe! I brought these for you!”
“Lady Lynn, if you would accept-”
“Human - I mean, honored guest - please take this token of-”
I stare at the growing pile of gifts outside Milo’s door: flowers, woven blankets, hand-carved wooden boxes, and what appears to be a sword.
“Someone brought me a sword,” I tell Isla.
“That’s a traditional blessing gift.” She picks it up, examining the blade. “Nice craftsmanship, actually. Someone spent serious money on this.”
“Why does a blessing involve weaponry?”
“It’s symbolic. ‘May you cut through your enemies’ or something.”
“I don’t have enemies!”
“You did twelve hours ago.” She grins at me. “Now you have a goddess-sized spotlight and an entire pack of wolves who are terrified of divine retribution.”
That’s what this is.
The bowing. The gifts. The complete one-eighty from last night’s arctic reception.
They’re not welcoming me. They’re appeasing me.
“This is insane.”
“This is pack politics.” Genevieve sweeps into the room, trailed by what appears to be every aunt, cousin, and female relative in the compound. “The goddess made her will clear. Anyone who opposes you now opposes her. So they’re falling over themselves to show loyalty.”
“By giving me a sword?”
“By giving you everything. Look - someone included a first-edition poetry collection. Very romantic.”
I look at the book she’s holding. Love Poems for the Immortal Heart, Volume XXVI.
“That’s… very specific.”
“Lycans have interesting taste.” She sets it down and takes my hands. “Now. We have a lot to do before moonrise, and not much time to do it.”
“Do?”
“The ritual, dear. You need to be prepared.”
“Prepared how?”
The aunties descend.
Two hours later, I barely recognize myself.
I hold still.
They’ve done something to my hair. I don’t entirely understand what, there was braiding involved, and flowers, and thin silver chains that catch the light, but the result is elaborate and beautiful and completely unlike anything I’ve ever worn.
The dress is white. Pure white, flowing fabric that feels like water against my skin. It’s traditional, Genevieve explains. Every chosen partner wears white to the ritual.
“It symbolizes openness,” she says. “A blank page. The beginning of a new chapter.”
“What happens during the ritual?”
“That’s between you, Milo, and the goddess.” She smiles mysteriously. “The pack keeps vigil at the treeline, but the clearing itself is private. Sacred.”
“So I don’t get to know what’s going to happen?”
“Would you want to?” Isla appears beside me, holding a mirror. “Half the magic is the mystery.”
I look at my reflection and don’t know what to say.
I look like someone else, I think. Someone who belongs here, who knows what she’s doing.
The other thing I’m not thinking about, that I’m absolutely, one hundred percent, not thinking about, is what actually happens after the vows.
The part with the knot, the part he warned me would be bigger this time.
I’ve been aggressively not thinking about it since the aunties started braiding silver into my hair, which means, of course, that it’s the only thing in my head, a low hot hum under everything, my thighs pressing together under yards of ceremonial white while a room full of women tell me I look serene.
I don’t feel serene. I feel lit from the inside, one wrong breath from going up.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
But I’m doing it anyway.
Before the aunties will let me go, there’s one call I can’t get out of. “Mom. Dad. Hi.”
The TimeFace connection is grainy, the compound’s Wi-Fi is apparently centuries behind the times, but I can see their faces clearly enough.
“Lynn! How’s the conference?” Mom’s voice is too bright. She’s been worried. I can hear it in every syllable.
“It’s good. Really good.” I try to keep my expression neutral, but something must show through, because-
“Honey, are you crying?”
“No.” I wipe my eyes. “Maybe. A little.”
“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s perfect.” The words catch in my throat. “I just… I wanted to see you. Before tonight.”
“Before tonight? What’s tonight?”
I can’t explain it, can’t tell them about the ritual, the goddess, the fact that I’m about to bind myself to a lycan king in a moonlit clearing.
So I say the only thing I can.
“I met someone.”
Silence.
Then, simultaneously:
“WHAT?” (Dad)
“OH MY GOD.” (Mom)
“WHO IS HE?” (Both)
“He’s-” I laugh, tears streaming down my face. “He’s wonderful. He’s kind, and patient, and he makes me laugh even when I want to strangle him. He brings me coffee. He argues with my hamster. He looks at me like I’m the most important person in the world.”
Mom is crying now too. I can see it even through the grainy connection.
“Does he treat you well?”
“He treats me like I’m precious.”
“And you’re happy?”
“I’m so happy, Mom. I’m so happy it scares me.”
“Oh, baby.” She’s fully sobbing now. “That’s all I ever wanted. That’s all we ever - Dennis, stop crying, you’ll make her cry more-”
“I’m not crying,” Dad lies, clearly crying. “I’m just - there’s something in my eye-”
“I love you both so much.”
“We love you too.” Mom blows her nose. “When do we get to meet him?”
“Soon. I promise.” I wipe my face. “I have to go now, but I’ll call you tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Everything?”
“Well. Most things.”
“That’s suspicious and I’m choosing to ignore it.” She blows me a kiss. “Go be happy, sweetheart. That’s an order.”
The call ends.
I stare at my reflection in the dark screen.
Go be happy.
I’m trying, Mom.
I’m really, really trying.
Later, in the last hour before the moon, I feel him before I hear him.
It’s been happening for weeks and I still don’t have a word for it.
A warmth that arrives in my chest a few seconds ahead of him, a pull that turns my head toward whatever door he’s about to come through.
Tonight it starts somewhere down the corridor and rolls toward me, low and certain, and by the time his boots are actually audible on the stone my skin has already gone tight and my breath has already gone shallow and there’s not one thing I can do about any of it.
It undoes me, the helplessness of it, not the wanting itself.
In a compound full of creatures who can smell a change in me from across a room, I can’t keep my own body a secret, and I’ve stopped even wanting to try.
Two aunties fussing with my veil exchange a glance and a knowing little smile, and I know exactly what they can smell, and I want to sink through the floor. He hasn’t even opened the door yet.
I’m sitting by the window, watching the light change, the white dress pooling around me like water, when he finds me. The flowers in my hair have wilted slightly, but no one’s tried to fix them.
They’re saving their energy for the actual ritual, I assume.
“Hey.”
His voice is soft.
I turn, and-
Oh.
He’s dressed in black. Simple, elegant, formal in a way that makes him look like he stepped out of a painting. His injured arm is bandaged but mobile, and his eyes are that warm green that makes my chest ache.
“Hey yourself.”
He crosses to me, kneeling beside the window seat so we’re at eye level.
“You look beautiful.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I’ll say it every day for the rest of my life.” His hand finds mine. “Lynn. We need to talk.”
“I know.”
“About tonight. About what it means. About-”
“Milo.” I squeeze his hand. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
He takes a breath.
“The ritual tonight isn’t just symbolic. It’s not just a ceremony, or a blessing, or a pack tradition.” His eyes search mine. “It’s a bond. A real one. The kind that doesn’t break.”
“Okay.”
“If we do this - if we go into that clearing and let the goddess witness - we’ll be tied together. Forever. Not just emotionally, but actually. You’ll feel what I feel. I’ll feel what you feel. There won’t be any hiding, any pretending, any-”
“Milo.”
“ - walls between us. And I need you to understand, before we do this, that it’s not-”
“Milo.”
He stops.
I cup his face in my hands, this ridiculous, wonderful, terrified man who rules a kingdom and still can’t quite believe anyone would choose him.
“I chose you before I knew there was a raffle.”
He blinks. “What?”
“The goddess’s blessing. The naming. The ritual, the pack, the politics-” I stroke my thumbs across his cheekbones. “I didn’t know about any of it when I fell in love with you. I just knew you brought me coffee. And you named my hamster. And you looked at me like I was worth looking at.”
“You’re worth everything.”
“So are you.” I lean in, pressing my forehead to his. “I’m not here because of prophecy, or destiny, or whatever cosmic forces you think are at play. I’m here because I want to be. Because you make me happy. Because I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
“Lynn-”
“So yes. Tonight. The ritual. Whatever it means, whatever it costs-” I kiss him, soft and sure. “I choose you. I choose us.”
“No second thoughts?” His eyes are bright. Wet.
“None.” I press my palm flat over his heart. “Not one.”
“Even knowing that you’ll be bound to a lycan king? That you’ll live in this world of politics and challenges and-”
“Even knowing all of it.” I smile against his lips. “I’m adaptable.”
He laughs, or maybe sobs, and pulls me into his arms.
Mr. Darcy is left with Isla, along with a two-page handwritten care manual and a yogurt drop bribe he refuses on principle.
He bites Isla once, hard, which she takes as a compliment because I tell her it is.
“Be good,” I whisper to him. “I’ll bring you treats.
” He gives a considering squeak. I choose to read it as agreement.
He leads me out through the woods, and the clearing, when we reach it, is beautiful.
Moonlight pours through the canopy, silver-white and impossibly bright. The trees form a natural circle around a space carpeted with soft moss and fallen leaves.
Milo leads me to the center, his hand warm and steady in mine.
“Ready?” he asks.
I look at him, this man who came into my life like an earthquake, who turned everything upside down, who made me believe in things I never thought possible.
“Ready.”
Somewhere beyond the treeline, I can hear the pack gathering. Torchlight flickers between the trees. Voices murmur, soft and reverent.
But here, in the clearing, it’s just us.
Us, and the moon, and whatever comes next.
Milo pulls me closer.
“Then let’s begin.”
The moonlight brightens.
And we step forward.
Together.