The Claiming Board went up at dawn, and I put on my one good dress to watch Joss name me.
Patched grey wool with a hem I'd sewn three times. I thought love could cover a bad hem.
I couldn't find Joss anywhere in that crowd, and my chest went tight and small.
A wool trader beside me said he'd seen Joss slip behind the board with a redhead.
I heard them before I saw them. A wet, steady sound, and a laugh I knew better than my own.
My sister's laugh. Odessa.
Joss had her against the back of the board, her velvet dress bunched up at her waist.
Her legs were around his hips and he was fucking her in slow, deep pushes.
Odessa: Right there. Don't stop, don't you dare stop.
Joss: Greedy bitch. You want it harder than that?
The board creaked with every push. I could see his cock sliding into her, wet and shining.
Her own hand was between them, working her clit in quick circles.
Odessa: Harder. I want to feel it when I sit through the whole Claiming.
Joss: Then take it. Fuck, you're so wet. I'll come in you and then name you in front of the pack.
Something inside me tore, quiet as paper.
Odessa: Oh. She's watching.
Odessa: Do you like it, Eden? Do you like seeing what you couldn't keep?
Joss: Go home. You're embarrassing yourself.
I made myself speak anyway. My voice shook in my own ears.
Eden: You promised me. In front of my mother, you promised me.
Joss: Promises are for women who can keep a bed warm. You never could.
His hand closed on my wrist and squeezed until the small bones ground together.
Five marks. Red going purple. The first ones he ever gave me.
I walked into the square with my wrist burning, because leaving felt like losing twice.
Elder Morven held the ink pot. And on the steps above us all stood the Alpha.
Varek. People said his name quietly, like it might hear them.
His eyes passed over the crowd and caught on me and stopped, and something low in my stomach pulled tight and wrong.
Joss: I name Odessa Harker.
The crowd made a sound like a wave breaking. She walked up in her velvet dress and her new mark and did not look at me once.
Morven: Joss of the timber yard names Odessa Harker. Recorded.
I pushed forward. I don't know why. Maybe I wanted him to look at me and see what he was throwing away.
My hand hit the pot. Black ink went up my skirt and down my sleeve, cold and spreading.
Someone laughed. Then twenty people laughed, and it built until the square rang with it.
I stood in the middle of it with ink dripping off my fingers.
Odessa: Look at her. Ink on her dress and no mate on her arm.
Odessa: That's what happens to a bitch who can't hold a knot.
Joss: She couldn't hold me when I was in her bed. Why would she hold anyone?
Odessa: Say one word about tonight and I'll have you dragged down to the river.
Odessa: You know what happens to girls who go in the water, Eden. They don't come up.
She said it kindly. That was the worst part. She meant every word.
I ran. Ink dripped off my sleeve the whole way out of the square.
At the edge of the crowd I looked back. Varek wasn't laughing.
He was watching me like a man who'd just found something he wanted.