My Alpha's Prank Made Me His Stepbrother's Mate

Chapter Seven: Counting Days

Ten days.

Ravena had started marking them on the inside cover of her notebook, small tally marks in the corner where no one would think to look, like she was a prisoner counting down a sentence instead of a girl counting down to the happiest night of her life. She told herself the difference was obvious. Most nights, she believed it.

"You've refolded that same dress four times," her mother said from the doorway, arms crossed, a soft smile tugging at her mouth.

Ravena looked down at the pale gold fabric pooled across her bed not the ceremonial robe itself, that had been fitted weeks ago and hung now in careful stillness at the back of her closet, but the dress she planned to wear to the pre ceremony gathering the pack always held the week before a bonding. She'd chosen it three times already and changed her mind three times, which wasn't like her at all.

"I want it to be right," she said.

"It's already right. You could show up in a burlap sack and that boy would still trip over his own feet." Her mother crossed the room, took the dress gently from her hands, and folded it properly, the kind of practiced motion that came from decades of doing small, ordinary things with love. "You're allowed to be excited, you know. You don't have to pretend this is just another Tuesday."

"I'm not pretending." Ravena sat on the edge of the bed, and some of the careful composure she'd been holding all week finally cracked, just a little, just enough to let something rawer show through. "I keep waiting for it to feel real. Like any minute someone's going to tell me it's all a mistake, that he changed his mind, that...."

"That's just nerves talking." Her mother sat beside her, took her hand the way she had when Ravena was small and frightened of thunderstorms. "You've loved that boy since you were seven years old. That kind of love doesn't evaporate because you're standing in a grove waiting for the goddess to say so."

Ravena nodded, though the knot in her chest didn't loosen the way she wanted it to. It hadn't loosened much at all, if she was honest with herself, not since the trial ten days ago not since she'd watched Zayden's teeth close around his own brother's shoulder with a violence that still haunted the edges of her sleep. She hadn't told her mother about the dreams. Hadn't told anyone. What was there to say that the man she loved had a temper capable of drawing blood from family, and that some small, unwelcome part of her kept wondering what else that temper was capable of?

It's nothing, she told herself. Brothers fight. Rivals fight harder. It didn't mean anything about the boy who'd waded into a creek after her when they were seven, who'd tucked her hair behind her ear and promised her three weeks like it was a vow.

A knock sounded at the front door downstairs, and a moment later Briala's voice carried up through the house, bright and teasing. "Ravena! Get down here, I brought the good wine and I refuse to drink it alone!"

Her mother squeezed her hand once more before rising. "Go. Be young. Let yourself be happy about this for one night without picking it apart."

Ravena tried. She really did.

Briala had brought wine and gossip in equal measure, sprawling across the porch swing with the kind of easy confidence that always made Ravena feel lighter just by proximity. They talked about nothing important, a professor's terrible lecture, a rumor about one of the senior guards, whether the caterers for the ceremony would finally get the honey cakes right this year after botching them at the last two bondings.

"You seem better," Briala said eventually, studying her over the rim of her glass. "Less like you're bracing for something."

"I'm not bracing for anything." Ravena took a sip, let the warmth of it settle low in her stomach. "I told you, I've wanted this my whole life."

"You have." Briala's expression softened, some of the teasing draining out of it. "I just want you to actually enjoy it, when it happens. Not spend the whole ceremony worrying about whether it's real, or whether he'll...." She stopped herself, cutting the sentence off with a small, apologetic wince.

"Whether he'll what?"

"Nothing. Forget it." Briala forced a smile, refilled both their glasses with more attention than the task required. "I just heard some of the guys talking after the trial. Zayden's friends. They were saying some stupid stuff about the ceremony, dumb bravado, you know how they get when they're trying to impress each other."

Something cold slid down Ravena's spine, quiet and immediate. "What kind of stupid stuff?"

"Honestly, I couldn't even tell you exactly, I only caught the tail end of it before they noticed I was there. Something about a bet." Briala waved a hand like she was brushing the whole thing away. "It's probably nothing. You know how those boys are, always trying to out dare each other over things that don't matter."

Ravena's fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. "What kind of bet?"

"Rav, I really don't think...."

"Briala."

Her friend hesitated, clearly regretting having brought it up at all, and for a long moment the only sound on the porch was the soft creak of the swing chains and the distant call of some night bird settling into the tree line.

"I don't know the details," Briala said finally, quiet now, all the teasing gone from her voice. "But it had something to do with Axton. And it had something to do with the ceremony itself."

Ravena's stomach dropped, and the honey cakes and gossip and easy wine warm evening she'd been trying so hard to enjoy suddenly felt very far away, replaced by a cold, creeping dread she couldn't quite name, a feeling that would follow her all the way to the ceremonial grove, ten days later, and would turn out to have been the only honest warning anyone gave her before everything fell apart.