“Who’s getting married?” Kristen asked, curious despite the dread already coiling low in his stomach.
His parents stared back at him, their expressions heavy with a mixture of pity and worry.
Richard sighed, resting his head against Rachel’s back for just a moment, like he needed the contact more than she did.
“You are, Kristen.”
Kristen felt his world instantly fracture.
An arranged marriage?
That was a archaic practice from the old days, a relic of ancient history, back when packs needed alliances and bloodlines more than they needed happiness.
But this was the twenty-first century.
He’d rather die than marry someone he didn’t even know.
“No,” Kristen growled.
He intentionally projected his inner wolf into his voice, standing at his full, imposing height as his golden eyes flared to life.
His mother shook her head, looking entirely unsurprised by his explosive reaction, as if she’d already known exactly how he would react.
Well, excuse me for being predictably annoyed about having my entire life bartered away, Kristen thought scathingly, glaring at his parents.
“Let’s go home.
We can discuss this better inside, with your sister,” his mom said, turning on her heel to walk back into the heart of the community.
His dad followed her without a word.
Kristen stayed back for a moment, watching their retreating backs — his mother’s straight-spined, steady stride, his father falling into step half a pace behind her, the way he always did.
Kristen had always walked in their shadows too, and he’d never minded it before.
He’d never had to think about what it meant.
But moments like this made the shadows feel less like shelter.
It felt utterly suffocating.
He took a deep breath to steady his racing heart, and finally followed them, walking slower than he needed to, dragging his feet through the long grass at the edge of the path like that might delay whatever was waiting for him at the end of it.
Trying to take in his surroundings to calm down.
Their territory was large — large enough that most pups grew up thinking the forest went on forever — but the pack grounds themselves took up most of it now, leaving only a thin ring of actual wilderness around the edges.
That was why the younger wolves were only ever allowed a few hours at a time to run free out there, and only with strict instructions to steer clear of the places marked dangerous on the old maps in the pack house.
But just because you don’t seek out danger doesn’t mean the danger won’t come looking for you.
Vampires, Kristen had learned early, were assholes.
Greedy, soulless things that coveted whatever wasn’t theirs, especially when what wasn’t theirs happened to be wrapped in skin and blood and a beating heart.
They’d taken pups who were still missing to this day.
They’d taken warriors who never made it home.
They’d taken hunters who’d gone out looking for food during the lean winter months and ended up becoming food themselves.
Kristen had had his own near-death brush with one of them when he was younger — young enough that the details had blurred into something closer to a nightmare than a memory, but real enough that it had cemented both his parents’ fear and his own simmering hatred of those monsters for good.
The pack would have liked nothing more than a tentative alliance with the humans against them.
But humans were the reason packs had been driven into forests like this one in the first place, hunted out of cities and towns generations ago until hiding became second nature.
They were the reason Ironbound was the only pack left anywhere near this city at all.
Kristen’s hands curled into fists at his sides just thinking about it.
It was better if they stayed entirely hidden.
The next human he crossed paths with would be butchered without hesitation.
All in all, the pack was tired — tired of losing people, tired of hiding, tired of pretending none of it touched them.
Kristen really hoped something would change soon.
He couldn’t bear the thought of watching his people slowly die off.
Eventually, they arrived at the packhouse.
It was a massive, sprawling old building, all dark wood and stone, big enough that in the days of the Oracles, every member of the pack had lived inside it together, shoulder to shoulder, one enormous family under one enormous roof.
These days it didn’t fit nearly everyone — the pack had grown too big and too scattered for that — but it still served as the heart of Ironbound, where the pack leaders lived, where pack business got done, and where, apparently, his entire future was about to get decided without much input from him.
It didn’t help that Ironbound also took in strays whenever it could — displaced wolves running from human hunters, injured refugees, and survivors who had been kept as slaves by the vampire clans.
They would have taken in rogues too, if it wouldn’t have put the rest of the pack at risk.
Most rogues ended up slaughtered by humans before that question ever came up anyway.
His parents had already slipped inside, likely heading straight for his mother’s office.
Kristen pushed open the heavy front door and stepped into the warmth of the house.
“Hey, bro.” His sister, Scarlet, was sitting on the living room couch.
One arm was splayed lazily across the backrest, her eyes instantly tracking him as he walked through the door.
Scarlet had their mother’s dark hair and their father’s height.
Kristen sighed, running a hand through his hair before pulling the door shut behind him.
“Hey, dude.”
“I heard about your marriage.” Her eyes shone with genuine empathy.
If anyone in this pack understood exactly how he felt right now, it would be her.
She was always rambling about the ancient fated-mate romances she dug up in the pack library.
True mates were rarely chosen by the Moon Goddess anymore; nobody knew why the divine bond had faded.
Some pragmatists were happy about it because it meant they were free to choose their own partners.
The hopeless romantics, however, were heartbroken.
Kristen fell firmly into the latter camp.
A match chosen by the Goddess would always be destined, right, and beautiful.
Choosing a partner on your own just meant making human mistakes, never knowing if they were truly the one.
Like his parents.
“How did they manage to tell you so fast?” Kristen asked.
He’d walked in only about three minutes behind their parents himself.
“They just casually dropped it while they were walking past,” Scarlet said, mimicking their mother’s commanding tone hopping up from the couch.
“‘Hey, we’re discussing Kristen’s marriage, come up to the office with him, And in my head, I was literally thinking, better you than me, you get me?”
Kristen let out a weak chuckle as he headed toward the staircase.
“You’re an ass, Scar.”
“I know, brother,” Scarlet said, pushing herself off the couch to follow him up the stairs.
A heavy silence settled between them for a few moments as they climbed.
“You know you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, right?” Scarlet said eventually, she reached out, grabbing his shoulder to force him to stop and look into her eyes.
“They’re the leaders of this pack, Kristen.
They can figure out a survival strategy that doesn’t involve selling you off.”
Kristen rolled his eyes, though the warmth of her protection comforted him.
“They’re not selling me,” he scoffed.
Scarlet simply raised a skeptical eyebrow, unconvinced, and said nothing else.
“And if it’s what’s best for the survival of the pack, I don’t really think I have a choice,” Kristen muttered, turning to walk the remaining distance to the office door.
He took one more deep, stabilizing breath, still acutely feeling his sister’s worried gaze burning into his back.
Steeling his nerves, Kristen turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Tell me your thoughts, pleaseeee (≧▽≦)