Hazel’s first reaction wasn’t fear.
It was immediately fury, and she rounded on the woman across the room before she’d even fully processed what she was looking at.
“What did you do?” she demanded, pointing a finger that belonged to someone else entirely.
Aldrien, standing there in her wedding dress with her own hair falling loose around his borrowed shoulders, looked just as horrified as she felt.
“Why would I do this?”
“Because you’re insane.”
“And apparently you’ve become stupid.”
She nearly lunged at him, and then remembered, with a fresh wave of horror, that she was currently wearing his body, which meant any violence she committed would be committed against herself.
That made her angrier, not calmer.
She looked down at her hands and found his hands instead, broad and unfamiliar, still stained faintly with the blood from the ritual.
She looked up at him and found her own face staring back, wearing an expression she’d never once made in her life.
“That’s my body,” she said.
He glanced down at himself.
“I’m aware.”
“Stop looking at it.”
“I’m looking at the floor.”
“Your eyes were not on the floor.”
Voices drifted through the door behind them, guests asking whether the newlyweds were all right, whether something had gone wrong with the ritual.
Hazel grabbed Aldrien’s wrist, or her own wrist, she honestly couldn’t tell anymore, and hauled him toward the private chamber they’d used before the ceremony.
She shoved the door shut and threw the bolt.
“You’re manhandling me,” Aldrien said.
“I’m manhandling my own body.”
“That’s my body you’re manhandling.”
They stared at each other across the small room, both breathing hard, and for a moment neither of them had anything to say to that.
“This is going to be a nightmare,” Hazel finally muttered.
“We agree on something.”
Neither of them wanted to believe it yet, so they started testing it instead, the way people test a wound to see if it’s really as bad as it feels.
Hazel asked him things only the real Aldrien would know, a memory from when he was nine and broke his arm falling out of a tree on Pinecrest land, a detail nobody outside his own household should have.
He answered without hesitating.
He asked her about her mother, about the specific way she used to hum while braiding Hazel’s hair, and Hazel felt something cold slide through her chest when he got it exactly right.
Then he mentioned something she’d done at fourteen, humiliating and half-forgotten, something she’d never told a single soul.
“How do you know that,” she said, quiet now.
“I was there,” he said.
“You just never noticed.”
That admission sat strangely between them, and neither pursued it further, because there wasn’t time and because Hazel wasn’t sure she wanted to know what else he’d noticed.
The last test was the one that finally killed her denial.
She reached inward for her wolf, expecting the familiar pull of gold eyes and quiet strength, and instead felt something entirely foreign answer the call, larger, darker, and utterly unfamiliar in the way it moved beneath her skin.
“That’s not my wolf,” she said.
Aldrien’s expression hardened, and she could see her own wolf rising behind his eyes when he answered.
“No.”
“Then this is real.”
“Apparently.”
She refused to fully accept it until she saw it with her own eyes, so she dragged him toward the mirror mounted near the washbasin.
He resisted at first, but she forced him in front of it, and they stood side by side, staring at their reflections.
Hazel found herself looking at Aldrien’s face in the glass, and Aldrien was looking at hers, and for one strange, quiet moment, neither of them said anything at all.
She was seeing herself the way he must have looked at her for years, from a distance, across ballrooms and training fields, and she didn’t know what to do with that.
“I look terrible,” she finally said, just to break the silence.
“You look exactly the same.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
She stepped closer without entirely meaning to, and lifted her hand, and touched her own cheek, the cheek that belonged to her but was currently under his control.
He went completely still.
She traced her jaw slowly, checking whether it felt real, but she was looking directly into her own eyes while she did it, and it felt strange in a way she couldn’t name, intimate in a way that had nothing to do with either of their actual bodies.
“This is so strange,” she whispered.
He caught her wrist before she could keep going.
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer right away, and she realized it was because he was holding his own hand, except it was her hand wrapped around his wrist, and neither of those facts made sense anymore.
He let go.
Then, almost without deciding to, he reached toward her face and touched his own jaw, and Hazel flinched at the contact and pulled back at the same instant he did.
Silence again.
They were standing far too close, and both of them knew it.
“Don’t do that again,” she said.
“You touched my face first.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
She didn’t have an answer for that, and the not-having was its own small problem.
A knock rattled the door before either of them could dwell on it.
“Your Highness? The guests are waiting.”
Hazel looked at Aldrien.
Aldrien looked at Hazel.
Out there, an entire wedding reception was still going, hundreds of guests, two rival packs, both their families expecting the newlyweds to emerge looking appropriately married.
“We can’t go out there,” Hazel whispered.
“We have to.”
“You’re wearing my wedding dress.”
He glanced down at the gown pooling around his borrowed legs.
“And you’re wearing my suit.”
She closed her eyes and tried to remember how to breathe.
They didn’t have time to panic properly, so instead they made rules, fast and practical, the way you make rules when the alternative is falling apart in front of two entire packs.
Nobody finds out.
They stay together.
They answer questions as each other.
Neither one ruins the other’s reputation while wearing it.
“And don’t flirt with anyone,” Hazel added.
Aldrien raised an eyebrow, her eyebrow, and it looked deeply wrong on her face.
“Why would I?”
“Because you’re in my body.”
“And?”
“And I know you.”
“You clearly don’t,” he said, and it landed harder than either of them expected.
They practiced anyway, because there wasn’t a better option.
Hazel straightened her shoulders and dropped her voice and tried for Aldrien’s usual unreadable stare.
“You look constipated,” he said.
“This is your face.”
“Exactly. You’re doing it wrong.”
Then he tried hers, smiling wide and bright in a way that looked entirely unnatural on features built for scowling.
“That’s horrifying,” Hazel said.
“Why?”
“You look like you’re planning a murder.”
“Perhaps that’s how you normally smile.”
She threw a pillow at him.
He caught it without thinking, a reflex too fast for either of them to control, and for one unguarded second they both laughed, short and real.
Neither acknowledged it afterward.
Another knock came, sharper this time.
“My Lady? Everyone is waiting.”
Hazel looked at him.
He looked at her.
“Ready?” she asked.
He adjusted the wedding dress with visible discomfort.
“No.”
“Good,” she said, opening the door.
“Neither am I.”
They stepped out into the corridor together, and every head turned toward them at once.
Hazel arranged her stolen face into what she hoped was Aldrien’s expression.
Aldrien smiled with hers.
Then they walked back into the wedding reception as each other, and hoped nobody looked too closely.
Thanks for staying!
it’s going to be a wild ride