After My Mate Named Another Woman His Luna

I spent an hour on my dress that morning.

It was the nicest thing I owned — a soft cream-colored wrap dress I'd found at a thrift shop in the nearest town, fourteen miles from the cottage. I'd taken in the waist myself, stitching it by hand with the same patience I used for everything out here. Three years of patience. Three years of learning to make do, make small, make quiet.

I pressed it flat with a warm iron and hung it on the back of the bathroom door while I braided my hair. Then I unbraided it. Then I left it down, the way Damian used to say he liked it, loose around my shoulders, long enough to cover the mark on my neck.

My wolf stirred as I pulled on my coat. Not an excited stir — something else. Something restless and low, like she was trying to get my attention without knowing what to say.

"It's fine," I told her quietly. "We're going home."

She didn't settle.

I picked up the small wrapped package from the kitchen table — a hand-knitted scarf, deep green, the color of the Ironveil pack crest — and walked out to the road to wait for the bus. The October air smelled like pine and rain. My wolf lifted her head at the scent, just for a second, and I felt something move through me that I couldn't name. Something almost like recognition, attached to nothing I could see.

I pressed my palm flat against the cold metal of the bus shelter wall and waited.

---

The central pack house was nothing like the cottage.

It was a compound, really — a sprawling stone building set back from a gated drive, surrounded by cabins and outbuildings, cars in the lot, pack members moving in clusters across the grounds. There were banner poles along the path, green-and-black bunting strung between them for the Ascension. Everything looked deliberate and festive and organized, and I stood at the edge of the drive for a moment before walking in, feeling the particular sensation of arriving somewhere that doesn't know you're coming.

A woman near the front steps glanced at me and then looked away. Two teenage boys moving equipment through a side door didn't acknowledge me at all. I waited for someone to say my name — to say anything, to place me, to confirm that I belonged here.

No one did.

I tightened my grip on the package and walked inside.

The front hall smelled like woodsmoke and pine cleaner. I followed the sound of voices toward the east wing, where I thought Damian's study was — he'd described it to me in letters. The hallway was long and unfamiliar and I moved through it slowly, reading the layout as I went, aware that I was learning my mate's home for the first time the day before his Ascension Ceremony. That thought sat wrong in my chest and I didn't examine it.

I was