The rope was rough in my hands, and the square had gone quiet the way it always did before a bell.
Lantern light on wet cobbles, my boots in the green dress, and the whole pack packed in shoulder to shoulder to watch a Bray ring it.
Crane: Ring it, Miss Bray.
I pulled, and the bell went out over the harbor like something let loose.
My bell. The one I'd poured with shaking arms and no sleep, and fuck, it rang clean.
Then heat climbed my arm, quick as a spark off the anvil.
A mark came up under my skin at the wrist, dark as a burn and twice as sure.
My wolf sat up in my chest, and she knew exactly what it meant.
Across the circle, Wade had his hand clamped over his own wrist.
White as fish belly under the lanterns. He felt it. He had to feel it.
I'd wanted Wade Corley since I was sixteen and stupid about it.
I never said it out loud. Not to Ottilie, not to Esk, and never to myself in daylight.
But some quiet part of me had been waiting for this exact night.
And Wade laughed.
Wade: Ha. No. Fuck no.
The laugh came out of him loud and wrong, and it rolled all the way around the stones.
Wade: That's a mistake. Right there, that's a mistake.
Duff: Bell-caster and the beta! Fuck me, that's a good one.
People laughed. Not all of them, but enough of them.
My face went hot from the neck up, and the mark on my wrist burned like it was being made a second time.
Wade: I refuse it. You all heard me. I refuse the bond.
Wade: I'm not getting tied to a foundry girl with grease under her nails.
I stepped toward Wade. I don't know what I thought I'd say to him.
Duff got a hand on my arm and hauled me back so hard my boot skidded.
Duff: Stay where you're put, bitch. He said no.
Duff: Try that again and I'll put you on the stones myself, and nobody here will say a word about it.
Nobody stopped him. That was the part that got under my ribs.
Talitha: Oh, Els. That's just awful for you.
She said it soft, and soft is how people talk to someone already on the floor.
Somewhere behind me my mother said my name, and there was iron in it.
Morag: Elspeth Bray. Stand up straight. You're a Bray and you're standing in front of these people.
Then the air at the back of the square changed. Cold first, then warm.
Someone stood at the edge of the lantern light. Tall, still, no face I could make out.
My wolf turned toward it like a door swinging open, and she wanted to go.
My hands were steady. That surprised me, because the rest of me was on fire.
I said nothing. I didn't cry and I didn't ask him why.
I would not beg a man in front of the whole pack. Not one word.
Esk: Back up. All of you, back the fuck up off my sister.
The mark on my wrist still burned, and the shape at the edge of the light still hadn't moved.
My wolf had already picked her direction, and it wasn't toward Wade.