Angel’s POV
Claudia’s ancient-young eyes moved across the gathering slowly. "This double mate bond is rare. It has happened before. It will not be altered by argunt or preference or ritual repetition." She looked at Terrell. Then at rrick. Then, finally, at . "The goddess has spoken what is true."
Silence.
Then...
"What?"
The word ca out of before I could stop it. High, startled, stripped of every composure I had. "Both?"
Two n. Both of them. Simultaneously.
I looked at Terrell.
He was looking at rrick with eyes like hamred steel, a muscle working in his jaw, sothing volcanic and controlled moving behind his expression.
I looked at rrick.
rrick, who had spent the last ten minutes gradually moving toward the treeline with the intentions of escaping, and who had been redirected back by the generals, and who was now standing under the full moonlight, looked at sheepishly.
I couldn’t believe this.
The man had indeed been validated by a moon goddess.
I turned back to face the sea.
"This," I said, to the sea, to the moon, to God, "is not what I prayed for."
I stood on the moonlit beach with the sea breeze moving through my hair and the sand soft under my shoes and I looked at Claudia - who was already old again, already diminished, already making her way back toward the treeline as though she had delivered a simple news rather than dismantled my entire understanding of my future - and I thought:
No.
No.
No.
Terrell moved first.
He shook his head sharply, the gesture of a man rejecting sothing physically, as though he could dislodge the words from the air if he moved quickly enough. Sothing crossed his face. Sothing that looked like hurt.
Then he turned and walked away.
No announcent. No command. No parting declaration for the assembled elders and warriors and the whole crowd gathered. He simply turned and walked, his shoulders set and his jaw forward and his hands at his sides, and the crowd parted for him automatically.
After he left, the gathering exhaled.
I stood in the space his departure had left and felt...
Actually I didn’t know what I felt. There were too many things arriving at once, jostling for position, and I couldn’t sort them into any sensible order so I just stood there holding all of them at once like soone who had been handed too many parcels and was refusing to drop any of them on principle.
Then rrick appeared at my side.
"Well," he said, his voice filled with the warmth of a man who has just received news he was hoping for and is being admirably restrained about it. "That was..."
"Don’t," I said.
He paused. "I was only going to say..."
"I know what you were going to say." I turned to look at him. He was standing in the full moonlight with his disheveled hair and his still-slightly-rumpled dungeon clothes and his silver eyes, and he was looking at with an expression that was open and warm. "And I need you to not say it."
"Angel..."
"Two n." I heard my own voice and it was doing sothing between a whisper and a controlled implosion. "How... in what world...how is that sothing that just happens to a person? How does soone go from planning to take holy vows to being declared the shared mate of two werewolf twins on a beach in the middle of the night..."
"It’s actually quite rare," rrick offered. "Historically speaking. It’s docunted but the occurrences are..."
"That is not helping."
"Right." He closed his mouth.
I took three steps away from him.
Then three steps back, because the sea was in that direction and I had nowhere rational to go.
"I can’t," I said. "I cannot be with two n at once. Do you understand ? It’s not... it goes against everything I was raised to believe. Everything my faith - my entire - I was raised in a household with values, rrick. I went to church. I said prayers. I had a plan that involved one God and one purpose and absolutely zero werewolves and I am not built for this..."
I turned and walked.
Away from the ceremony and the elders and the impossible announcent still hanging in the salt air. Down the beach, toward the far end where the moonlight hit the water in long silver strips and there were no people.
rrick followed.
I walked faster.
He was beside in seconds.
"Angel, you can’t keep running..."
"I’m not running," I said. "I’m walking."
"You’re walking very quickly."
"I’m not."
"You’re also heading toward the water."
I stopped.
The sea was four feet in front of , the small waves arriving and retreating slowly.
rrick’s hand closed gently around my arm.
"Everything cannot be solved by running away," he said.
"I’m not..." I stopped. Exhaled. "I know." The fight went out of my voice for a mont and what was underneath it was just - tired. "I know I can’t run. I know there’s nowhere to run to. I know all of that." I turned to face him. "But rrick, listen to . I cannot have two husbands. I don’t know what the moon goddess intends by this or why she would... it doesn’t matter, because I cannot do it. It’s against my faith. It’s against everything I understand about how people are supposed to live together. One person, one partner, one - that’s all I was ever"
"It doesn’t have to be complicated," he said.
I looked at him.
"I an it." He turned toward fully, and his expression was serious now. "It can be managed carefully. On your terms, at your pace. Terrell and I can - we can arrange things. Plan around your comfort. Take turns, share responsibility, whatever structure makes you feel safe." His eyes held mine. "You would never lack for anything. You would be the most protected woman in every territory. And you would have two n who - who would spend every day trying to deserve you."
I stared at him.
Part of - so small treacherous part - heard the words and felt them land sowhere soft.
The rest of rembered who I was and where I was and what I’d passed through.
"You were helping escape few hours ago," I said.
He had the grace to look slightly caught. "Yes."
"You had my hand and we were running."
"Also yes."
"And now you think this place is safe for ? Now that you got what you wanted from the ritual, suddenly the answer isn’t to run?"
rrick was quiet for a mont. Then he spoke again. "Claudia’s declaration changes things. Before tonight you were here unofficially - a woman the Alpha had brought in, a rumour, sothing the court was speculating about." He looked at steadily. "Now you are publicly confird as the Luna of this pack. That is not a small thing. That makes you a target." Sothing moved through his expression. "There are people who benefit from Terrell remaining without a mate. People who have built influence in that gap for decades. People who will look at tonight’s announcent and see a problem that needs solving."
The sea moved in and out.
I looked at him.
I thought about slave traders, Hawkins estate, the attempted murders, and every version of unprotected I had already been.
"So I’m trapped here," I said quietly. "For my own safety."
"You’re here," he said. "For your own safety. There’s a difference."
I looked at his face - those silver eyes in the moonlight, so like the ones I was refusing to think about attached to the man who’d destroyed my life - and I felt the exhaustion and the grief and the impossibility of all of it arrive at once, and my legs gave out.
I sat down on the sand.
rrick quickly sat beside without being asked.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to continue the argunt or resu the reassurance. Just sat there in the sand next to while I pressed my hands over my face and let the tears co.
He put one arm around my shoulders.
I let him.
"I’m so tired," I said, into my hands.
"I know," he said.
"I wanted to be a nun."
A pause. "I know that too."
"This is the opposite of that."
"Categorically, yes."
I let the tears fall freely. Sobbing into rrick’s shoulders.
From sowhere up the beach, ca the sound of a commotion.
A woman’s voice.
"Get your hands off ... I said get your... do you know who I am?"
I lowered my hands.
Sheena was being escorted by the generals toward the garden path, and she was making her feelings about this loudly known. Her ceremonial robes were pulling against the grip on her arm.
I watched her go.
Alpha Terrell’s POV
I had been pacing for approximately ten minutes and the garden had not improved.
Back and forth across the sa stretch of stone path between the hedgerows, my hands locked behind my back, the night air doing nothing for the thing that was happening in my chest.
Both.
One thousand and forty-seven years.
That was how long I had been alive. How long I had been Alpha, fought wars, built sothing out of nothing, watched generations rise and fall and kept standing through all of it. One thousand and forty-seven years of waiting for the bond - the one thing that even the longest life couldn’t manufacture, couldn’t force, couldn’t simply take - and when the goddess finally, finally answered:
Both.
I stopped pacing and put both hands flat on the stone railing at the garden’s edge and looked down at the moonlit grounds below.
I had shared everything in my life with rrick. From the first breath drawn in the sa room to every year after - the training, the wars, the territories won and lost and won again, every consequential thing that had happened to one of us had in so way shaped the other.
I had never resented it. Not once.
Tonight was testing that record.
Why not give him his own Luna? Why this woman - this specific woman, with her stubbornness and her courage and her vanilla scent - why did she have to be the one that was split between us?
Why not anyone else?
I knew the answer, obviously. That was the infuriating part. I knew exactly why - had known, in the part of that was honest when no one was watching.
I ground my teeth and looked at the moon.
The sound of Sheena’s voice reached before they did - high and insistent...
"This is absolutely unnecessary - I demand to speak to..."
"Bring her here."
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