THE BLOOD DOESN’T LIE: The Rejected Mate Saga

The ritual starts at midnight. That’s our tradition. The old packs started it that way. There was just something about the moon being at its fullest and the veil between human and wolf being thinnest in the hour that belongs to neither day. So here we were at midnight, standing in the Ashvale ceremonial clearing in the forest behind the Creston Falls country club, because werewolf tradition has exactly the same relationship with inconvenience as every other kind of tradition. It ignores it completely. I’ve been standing in this clearing for twenty minutes and my feet are starting to go cold through my boots. There are seventy people here. Every Ashvale pack member over the age of sixteen, plus the alpha elders who flew in from the eastern territories because of tonight’s occasion. Six years of waiting had come down to this: the initiation, the ritual confirmation of wolf manifestation and mate bond, and then the after party where everybody drinks expensive things and congratulates themselves on continuing to exist as a species. I’ve been imagining this night since I was twelve years old. I’ve been imagining it mostly because of him. Caden is across the clearing. He’s always across whatever room I’m in. He is talking to Dex Orin and not looking at me, which is normal. We don’t look at each other directly in public. We never have. That is a thing we have always had in common: the understanding that some things are too real to perform in front of an audience. I know what I am to him. I’ve known for two years, since the night after his father’s pack ceremony when the bond between us snapped into place like a sound I’d been hearing my whole life finally materialized into a person I could see. I didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t tell anyone. We carried it the way you carry something fragile — carefully, with both hands, watching where you put your feet. Tonight, we would no longer be a secret. My aunt Mira squeezes my hand. She’s standing at my left, which is the family position in Ashvale ritual, and she smells like lavender but I can also smell the anxiety she’s been feeling for three days. I’ve been ignoring it because I don’t have the bandwidth tonight. I’ll ask her about it tomorrow. Elder Raith, begins the invocation. Old words. The pack responds in the old language, a low collective sound that moves through the clearing like a current. My wolf stirs — she’s been awake and restless since sunset, pacing, which I take as a good sign. Tonight she’ll manifest fully for the first time. Tonight everything was perfect. He calls my name and I walk to the center of the clearing. Seventy people are watching. I keep my chin level and my breathing even. I have been practicing keeping my breathing even for approximately six years. Caden joins me at the center. The bond between us is so present it has a sound, a low resonant hum that I feel in my sternum, and I think to myself, tonight is finally here. He’s in a dark jacket, dark pants, the ceremonial silver pin at his collar that marks the Ashvale heir. His hair is that specific disheveled that looks like he tried but also didn’t because he always tries and always also doesn’t. He turns to face me and his green eyes meet mine. For one full second, I see everything I’ve felt for six years reflected back at me, and the bond hums, and my wolf lifts her head, and I think: yes. Then his face goes still. The kind of still that is the absolute opposite of calm — the kind you get when something requires enormous effort to maintain. Like he is holding something very heavy and trying so hard to not let it show. My wolf goes silent. No He opens his mouth and says: “I reject you as my mate.” The words land in my chest like a physical object. A sound goes through the clearing that I register distantly as seventy people expressing shock at once. I don’t move. We’re still staring at each other. His eyes look like there’s a war going on in his mind. I suddenly lose my ability to speak. My wolf has gone so silent too. The bond, the hum in my sternum that I’ve been carrying for two years is gone. Like your favorite song cutting off mid-note. Elder Raith says something about the rejection being formally witnessed. Everyone is completely quiet. I become aware that seventy people are looking at me, waiting to see what I do. I decide I am not going to cry, at least not here in front of seventy people, I would rather drink a bottle of poison. I become aware that my hands are at my sides and my chin is level and my breathing is even and I have, apparently, been practicing for exactly this. Mira is at my elbow. I don’t know when she moved. She says my name very quietly. I look at Caden for one more second. He is still looking at me. There’s something in his eyes I’m not reading it right. Something is wrong with my ability to read him tonight. I file that away and decide it doesn’t matter, because he rejected me and everything else is noise. I nod once. I walk back across the clearing. Seventy people watch me go. I count my footsteps. I keep my chin level. I keep my breathing even. I was so sure. I was so sure and I was wrong and I will never trust anyone again. I get to the edge of the clearing and I don’t stop. I keep walking, past the treeline, into the dark, one foot in front of the next until there’s no more light and no more watching and just the trees and the cold and the fact that something that existed two minutes ago no longer exists. I stand there for a while. My wolf is still silent. After some time, I hear Mira behind me. She doesn’t say anything. She just stands there, two feet away, and I can hear her trying not to cry and not quite managing it. “Don’t.” She stops. “I need you to not do that right now.” “Okay.” We stand in the dark for another minute. Then I say: “Tell me when it’s time to go.” “Okay, love.” I look up through the trees at the sky. I have been waiting for tonight for six years. Tonight, I am going to pack one bag and leave this territory by dawn and I am going to be fine, because I have no other option. I just needed a minute to get myself together. My eyes are wet with tears. I let them stream down my face. No one can see me here. After a while, I decide I’m done crying. Then I turn to leave.