The hall smelled of pine wax and new cloth when I came in at first light.
The Luna ceremony was that night, and the speaker wire was still dead.
I carried copper in one hand and my tools on my belt.
Adelie stood on the platform with her hair pinned and the silver pin on.
Women I grew up with carried blue cloth around her like she was already queen.
Adelie: Put that coil down and get out. We don't need the radio girl today.
Nova: The speaker's dead. If it stays dead, nobody hears the vows tonight.
Adelie: Then nobody hears them. This isn't your ceremony.
She stepped off the platform and stopped close to me.
Adelie: I know what his hands did to you on that tower. He told me himself.
Adelie: A wolf-less bitch who spreads her legs on a cold floor. That's all you were to him.
Heat climbed my neck, and my hands stayed steady on the wire.
A man in a work coat shouldered past me, and my toolbox hit the boards.
Coils rolled out under everyone's boots.
I knelt and gathered copper while the whispers started over my head.
Someone said I had no wolf, no mate, and no place in a Luna hall.
Another asked what a wolf-less woman was even doing in here.
A big man planted his boot on my wire so it would not come free.
He told me that if I showed up at the ceremony, he would drag me out by the hair.
Evander came in with Piet behind him. The hall went quiet.
He looked at the platform, not at me.
Evander: Stay out of the hall tonight. If I smell you in there, Piet drags you out himself.
Nova: I need one hour with the speaker wire. That's all.
Evander: No. And I don't give a shit about your wire.
Evander: Nobody wants you in the room where I take my Luna.
I picked up my toolbox with the wire still pinned under his boot.
My eyes burned, but I did not let one tear fall in front of them.
I let them see nothing they could use.
That night the hall doors shut, and the cheering came through the wood.
They stamped and howled for her, and it went through my chest like a nail.
I stood in the yard and let them have it.
Then I walked to the radio shed and shut the door on all of it.
The static hissed, the bench was cold, and my hands knew what to do.
I spliced wire and did not think about his face.
The bond tugged at me all night, toward the hall, toward him.
I let it tug and kept working until my fingers went raw on the copper.
Past midnight it ended, and the pack laughed their way home.
I said it out loud in that shed so the walls could hear me.
Nova: I am not what he says I am. I am not a bitch in a corner.
Nova: I will fix what they break, and one day they will need me to.
It was not a wolf's vow. I had no wolf to swear with.
It was mine, sworn on a cold bench and a dead radio.
I worked until the window went gray.
Then boots crossed the yard, slow, and stopped outside my door.
Piet: Nova. Open up. We need to talk.
My hand stayed on the wire, and I did not get up.