Selba turns from Briar with her face going red, and her eyes land on me and the blood still wet on my chin.
Selba: This is your fault. All of it, you sneaky little bitch.
Her palm cracks across my face, and the candle flames swim.
My teeth bite my cheek from the inside, and blood floods my mouth, hot and copper. I swallow it.
Selba: You knew he was coming. You put yourself in the front row with your mended dress and your sad face, and you made him smell you.
Selba: You trapped him.
I didn't know his name an hour ago, and I didn't know a bond could feel like a hook in my chest.
Nobody here wants that truth. They want the story where I'm the trick.
Marda: Out of my way, both of you.
Mother comes around the candle stand with her hands folded and her mouth thin, and she looks at my face like a bill somebody handed her.
Marda: So the wolfless one finally found a way to be seen. A trick. A bond pulled out of thin air.
Marda: A northern heir's name doesn't make you worth shit. You're still the thing I scrub off my floor.
Her fingers close on my jaw, her nails digging into the bruise on my cheek, and she turns my face to the candles.
My face is so hot, and it isn't from the slap.
She walks me out past the tall candles with her hand still on my jaw, and the whole hall is there, every face turning.
Marda: You'll kneel down on this stone and tell the pack you tricked him.
Marda: Then you'll go to Kerrick Vane's door and beg him to forgive you, and kiss his boots if he asks.
My chest is still tearing. The bond doesn't care that he called me a cold corpse in front of the pack. It still pulls.
That's the worst shame of the night, and it's mine alone.
Briar: She's not kneeling. She didn't do shit to him.
Briar comes out from behind the stand with her apron still tied, her knees shaking, and she doesn't back up an inch.
Selba: Say one more word and your name comes off the market roll before sunup.
Nico: Then we sell river weeds out of a bucket. Get in line, Selba.
Marda: Down, Riona. Both knees. Or I take you home by the hair, and there's a man at the north camp who buys broken things.
Marda: He won't ask for an apology. He'll ask you to be quiet.
Mother has never once lied about what she'd do to me, and that is why my body knows how to stand still.
At the side door, the Alpha heir stands like a post with his jaw tight enough to break, and his eyes are on me.
Marda: Family business, Alpha heir. You'll excuse us.
He doesn't step back. And under the pulling in my chest, something else lifts its head, small and hot, like an animal I didn't know was mine.
Selba: Say it. Open your fucking mouth and say you trapped him, you useless little shit.
My knees haven't bent, and my mouth is full of blood, and the anger in me is suddenly cleaner than any bond.
I thought I was a stain somebody forgot to scrub out. Tonight I think I'm a door, and they've never met what's behind it.
So when I look at my mother, I don't look at the floor.