The market is all lantern light and wet cobbles after the dark of the pump house.
My arm is taped tight and still bleeding through the wrap, and I walk in anyway.
Mavra: Every head on this row just turned. Don't let them see you count.
Then the four of them turn at once, and it isn't their heads that move. It's something under the skin.
Aric: That's her. That's the one.
Ulric: Fuck me. She's not even shifted.
Veyla: Four Alphas sniffing, and the wolfless bitch turns up in waders.
The whole row of stalls laughs, and not one of them is joking.
Veyla: What do they want, Kestra? You're a hole with a wrench in it.
My ears ring, and my chest goes hot anyway, which I hate most of all.
Being wanted is supposed to feel good. This feels like being stripped in the street.
Dain pulls Veyla in by the hip and kisses her rough against the fish stall, all teeth and no manners.
Then he lifts his head and looks straight at me over her shoulder, still holding her.
Veyla: He's mine, pump girl. Say it out loud so the whole row hears.
Dain: Veyla. Enough.
He says it soft, and then he doesn't let her go.
I take the side lane out past the stable, where the lanterns don't reach and nobody bothers to look.
Rhoswen's back is against the boards, and Talon's hands are under her shirt.
Rhoswen: Talon. Don't stop.
His mouth is on her throat, and then his head comes up slow and he breathes me in from ten feet of dark.
Talon: Go back to the market, Rhoswen. Now.
She pulls her shirt straight and walks past me without a word, and her jaw is working hard.
I know that walk. I've done that walk.
So I go back into the light with my chin up and blood on my sleeve, because running isn't a thing I do.
Kestra: You wanted me. Here I am. Say it to my face.
Aric: You're our mate. All four of us. You feel it or you don't, but it's true.
Kestra: I feel four men looking at me like dinner.
Veyla gets to me first, and her palm cracks across my cheek so hard the market noise goes thin and bright.
My taped arm slams into the stall post, and blood comes through the wrap, warm and fast.
Veyla: Say no to him again and I'll gut you in the lane behind the pumps. The court will call it a drowning.
She means it. I've seen what she means before.
Kestra: Then you'd better be faster than me with a wrench.
Kestra: Six years I kept this town dry. None of you ever came down those stairs.
Kestra: So no. Your noses don't get a vote. You don't own me, and I'm nobody's joke.
The market goes quiet, and Ulric's grin dies first. Then Dain's hand slides off Veyla's hip.
Talon stares at the ground like he's never seen it before.
I'm Aric, and I watch her walk out with her cheek red and her sleeve dark, and I don't move.
Then I do what I always do when something gets under my skin. I take Mirembe upstairs.
The room above the market is small and hot, and her red dress is on the floor before the door clicks shut.
She pulls me down by the collar, and then I have her against the wall.
The rest of it goes somewhere I don't have to watch.
Later she reaches for her dress and doesn't look at me.
Mirembe: You were thinking about somebody else the whole time.
Aric: Get out, Mirembe. I've got business.
Her face doesn't change, and that's the worst part. She's used to it.
Through the glass, Kestra is already at the end of the market row, and she doesn't look back once.
Aric: Fuck.