The oath rehearsal starts at midmorning in the Alpha House hall, and my lip is still split from the market.
My wrist is wrapped in a strip of old sheet, and under the wrap the small bones ache when I make a fist.
Hetta: Riona. Thank god. My ribbon's come loose and my hands won't work.
Hetta's fingers are shaking like she's the one who got shoved into a stall post.
Riona: Give it here before you drop it and we both get blamed.
I pin the ribbon straight, and she squeezes my arm, and it's such a small kindness that my throat hurts.
Briar and Nico come through the side door with baskets of bread for the long tables, arguing about the count.
Nico: Fourteen baskets, Briar. I counted them twice.
Briar: You counted the same basket twice, you absolute turnip.
They set the bread down and Nico bumps her shoulder with his, and she leans back, easy, like love is just something you get to have in public.
Thera: Hetta of the river row, Rolf of the north field. The bond is true and the pack will hear it said once before the oath.
Hetta makes a sound like she's been hit, and Rolf turns red to the ears.
Rolf takes her hand and says something only she can hear, and Hetta laughs with her whole face.
Rolf: I told you. I told you it wasn't a mistake.
I clap.
My hands shake so hard that the claps come out soft and wrong, and I keep going anyway.
I'm glad for her. I want to be that glad and nothing else.
Selba: Look at that. The stain clapping for a bond she'll never have.
Selba's hand closes on my bad wrist and squeezes until the ache turns into a bright hot wire up my arm.
She pulls me out through the side door and down the little stone corridor where they keep the ceremony candles.
The clapping goes muffled, and then it's just her breath and my heartbeat.
Selba: You think a bond is going to come for you? Some wolf is going to smell you and go soft?
Selba: Nobody's going to put a mate mark on a wolfless bitch. You're a pair of hands and a warm hole, and that's the whole of you.
She shoves me into the wall and the back of my head cracks on the stone, and I see white.
Blood comes from my lip again, slow and warm, down my chin onto my collar.
I believe her. That's the worst thing. I've believed her since I was small.
Selba: Clap for Hetta again in front of the pack and I'll have Mother sign you over to the tanner's brother. He likes his women quiet.
Selba: You'll kneel in his house until you forget your own name, and nobody will come looking.
She says it like a fact, and my mouth goes dry and my knees go weak.
She pats my cheek, gentle, right on the split, and walks back through the door like nothing happened.
I stand in the candle corridor with my hands shaking and try to remember how a face works.
Briar: Riona. Riona, hey. Breathe. I've got you.
Briar finds me, and she wipes the blood off my chin and doesn't ask me to say anything.
Nico: Say the word and I'll go stand in front of your sister with a bread knife.
Briar: You'd lose.
Nico: I'd lose loud.
When I get back inside, the Luna is finishing the oath words and Hetta is beaming at the whole hall.
So I clap. My hands are still shaking, and I clap.
Hetta: Riona, you're coming to the ceremony, aren't you? I want you near the front.
I nod, and my chest does something I don't have a name for.
For one minute I'm not invisible, and it's so good it scares me.
The hall fills up, and Rolf puts his hand on Hetta's back like it belongs there.
A bond can be that. A bond can also be a hall full of people watching a man decide what you're worth out loud.
I don't know which one is waiting for me.