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February 15, 2017
I can’t believe I did it.
Brushing my fingertips over the indentations of my words on the paper, I try to remember how I felt when I wrote them. Vague ideas like “exhilarated” and “terrified” come to me, but I can’t experience that day again, no matter how hard I imagine.
It was the day my life completely changed. The day I invoked the right to leave our pack and live a mortal life for five years, instead of simply accepting the transformation and becoming a full werewolf.
The intercom chimed its gentle breakfast announcement and I put my old diary back in the bedside drawer, where it’s awaited my return for the past five years. But I’m not the seventeen-year-old I was when I left. I’m a grown-up stranger in that girl’s bedroom, with its soft pink canopy bed curtains and gleaming white furniture.
You just got home, I remind myself. Give it time.
I go to the vanity where I spent so many teenage hours practicing my eyeliner skills and contouring my face to Kardashian perfection. Things were much simpler then, before I heard of the Right of Accord. I hurry through my makeup routine—I may have arrived in the middle of the night, but Vivianne Dixon expects her children to look “acceptable” to her standards no matter the circumstances—and dig through one of my wardrobe trunks for a silk floral peasant top and dark wash jeans.
My childhood home is an outdated “modern” mansion my parents had custom built in the late eighties, long before I was born. Our kind—their kind, until I make my final decision—live long enough to make a lot of bad style choices. Mother and father have already tucked into their breakfast in the stark white, oblong dining room. The black Lucite dining table is set with square white platters of more food than we’ll eat, and mother looks up from taking a helping of mixed fruits from one of them. The cold blue light of the early morning filters down from the octagonal skylight and creates a halo of silver around her gray hair.
“Darling, I didn’t expect to see you this morning. Hudson said you didn’t arrive until nearly four.” She doesn’t rise from her seat, but waits for me to lean down so she can kiss the air beside my cheek. “That’s an…interesting top.”
“Thanks.” I pretend she means it, and round the table to put an arm around my father’s shoulder in a half-hug. By the time he swallows his toast and dabs his mouth with his napkin, I’m already back to my seat. I shake out my own linen napkin and smooth it over my lap. “I did get in late.”
“Well, it’s a long flight from London,” father says, and it’s probably all he’ll have to say for the whole breakfast.
Mother will make up for it. “Other than the delay, how was your flight?”
“It was fine.” I take a croissant and some fruit, my stomach still roiling from the salmon I ate on the plane. It had not agreed with me. “I slept most of the way.”
“Good. Then you won’t be too jet lagged for tonight.”
“Mother—” I begin, but she doesn’t look at me, concentrating on buttering half of an English muffin. If she doesn’t look at me, she can pretend I haven’t objected.
“Of course, if your flight had arrived on time, we would have been able to get you something suitable to wear.” She glances up and briefly purses her lips. “No matter. I had Tara send over a few gowns. From before she gained all that weight.”
I may have been gone for five years, but I’ve seen plenty of photos of my sister on Facebook. She’s gone up a single dress-size, maybe.
Totally unacceptable for a daughter of Vivianne Dixon.
“Look, I just got in and the ball is a lot—”
“A lot of work?” Mother interrupts me. “Yes. It is. It’s what makes it an obligation. And it’s also the perfect opportunity to make a fresh debut to the pack. To show them that your little…walkabout, as it were, is
finally over.”
“I haven’t—” I stop myself. I’ve been in my parents’ presence for minutes and my mother has already started making me feel bonkers. I’m not about to start my first morning back with an argument.
“You haven’t had time to unpack or do anything with your hair,” she says, waving her hand.
I self-consciously touch my freshly straightened blonde locks.
“I’ve booked Jonathan for two hours with you today,” she prattles on. “Not enough time to fix those highlights, but I’m sure he can make something out of all…”
My fists clench under the table as she gestures vaguely at my problem areas. Which, to her, is all of me.
“Listen…” I begin tentatively. It will do me no good to sound argumentative. “I know what a huge deal the ball is and how long everyone has prepared for it. I don’t want to drag you all down and make you look bad.”
“Nonsense, puppy,” father says placidly, his eyes scanning his iPad the way he used to ignore us for the newspaper. “You could never make us look bad.”
Mother chokes on her coffee and tries to pass it off as a gently teasing laugh. “Well. There was that one teensy little time.”
The time I invoked my right to think for myself, to not accept the transformation as my fate. The time I dared put myself before the Dixon name.
“But that’s all in the past. You’re home now.” Mother’s smile is a warning. “And Ashton has been asking about you.”
My stomach curdles in a way that has nothing to do with the first-class salmon. “Oh?”
“He’s never given up on you,” she goes on with a sigh. “Very romantic, if you ask me.”
Or pathetic, if she asked me, but she didn’t. I keep it to myself. There’s nothing romantic about the idea of returning to my old life, my old fate, delayed by five years. I assumed that by rejecting the transformation, I effectively rejected Ashton Daniels.
“I thought he would have found a mate by now.” Hoped. I hoped he had found a mate by now. But if he didn’t…
“No. He’s never renounced his claim on you, even after your little tantrum.”
“It wasn’t a tantrum, it was—” I stop myself, force another smile, and subdue my sigh of frustration. “I just hoped he would have moved on and found happiness, rather than waiting around for me.”
“I suppose that’s guilt you’ll simply have to live with.” Mother’s words pointedly imply that my former fiancé isn’t the only person I should feel badly about inconveniencing. “It’s possible he’s forgiven you.”
“And it’s possible he hasn’t, and he’ll mention that tonight, in front of everyone,” Father
adds helpfully.
Mother nods. “A bridge you’ll need to cross when we come to it, Bailey. You publicly humiliated the poor man.”
He was a poor boy, then, and at the time, I did feel terrible about invoking the right. But he had a choice. He could have invoked the right himself and come with me, if he really wanted to be together.
Thankfully, he didn’t.
“And if he decides to humiliate me in return with a public rejection tonight, I can accept that.” Besides, ending our engagement is the least he can do for both of us.
“He wouldn’t dare,” Mother reassures me. “The Fealty Rite is too important to risk making a scene.”
Another warning. I’m not to fuck anything up for her, tonight. I already destroyed her carefully cultivated image in front of the pack.
Hudson, the thrall Mother and Father hired as our butler right before I left for London, enters, pushing a cart bearing two trays covered by silver domes.
It’s a myth that werewolves can’t touch silver.
Mother sits back as he places the plate in front of her and lifts the lid. A human heart, glistening with congealed blood, rests on a bed of lettuce. Mother gasps in delight and softly claps her hands in appreciation. “Bravo, Hudson. I don’t know where you keep finding these perfect little morsels.”
“A trade secret, ma’am.” He retrieves the other platter and sets it in front of father, lifting the dome to reveal a nearly identical meal. Father mutters a thank you, and both my parents take up their silverware and tuck in, traditional breakfasts forgotten.
It’s a sight I’ve seen hundreds of times, before every religious ceremony and full moon over the course of my entire life. But after five years living among the humans, I view the organs a bit more personally.
As in, they were once people.
Either I hide my disgust well or my mother ignores it. She cuts a slice from the heart in front of her and nods toward my plate. “Well. Eat up. We have a busy day.”
I choke my down croissant. My dread at the thought of the ball, of seeing Ashton again? Much harder to swallow.
Toronto has no shortage of impressive houses, but Aconitum Hall is in a class of its own. Built long before the skyscrapers and urban planning, the city has crept up to the mansion’s tower walls and tiered gardens, preserving it as a fairytale castle out of time. And since the very first stone was set into the foundation, it’s been the traditional home of our pack leader.
It’s Buckingham Palace but packed full of werewolves.
But it doesn’t look much like the Queen’s house. Aconitum Hall was built in early gothic revival style, which I know only from taking the tour more than once on school trips. It could easily be mistaken for a cathedral at first glance. There are spires on some of the conical tower roofs and a ton of gargoyles. Two of them leer down at us through the sunroof of the car as we pull beneath the porte cochere.
“First, we’re received by the king. When everyone has arrived, dinner will be served,” Mother repeats for me, as if I somehow forgot on the drive. “After that, dancing and socializing. Make sure you speak to at least one member of each family.”
So they know our wayward daughter has fallen in line again. She doesn’t need to explain that part.
The car pulls to a stop and a valet opens the back door. Mother and Father, who spent the ride in the seats across from me, get out first, before I, slightly carsick from the backwards facing ride, maneuver myself out. A regal red carpet is our path up the steps and into the blazing golden light of the massive foyer.
“Your wraps, ma’am, miss?” a valet asks as we enter. Mother and I hand over our furs and Father shrugs out of his smart wool coat, tucking the coat-check slip into the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket. Though werewolves are more tolerant of the cold than humans, it’s still January in Toronto, and the breeze from the open doors behind us raise gooseflesh on the nape of my neck.
Mother’s stylist, Jonathan, has worked my ash blonde hair into a loose, romantic up do that looks tousled and free despite remaining entirely stationary no matter how much I might shake my head. A delicate halo of spun silver wire studded with winking white diamonds weaves through my soft curls, matching the crystal rhinestones clustered at the hem of my gray tulle overskirt. The gems rise and disperse liking fading constellations, and the silver silk layer beneath glows like the face of the moon.
It’s not my dress, it’s not how I would have worn my hair, and this is very much not a party I want to be at.
“Come along,” Mother whispers with a tight smile, nudging me forward to join the line of partygoers waiting to be announced in the throne room.
My strappy silver heels are already digging into my feet. I can predict where the blisters will be tomorrow morning. That is, if I don’t slip on the marble floor and split my head open.
“Aren’t we going to wait for Tara and Clare?” I ask. In the past, we’ve all been together when my father has declared our allegiance to the pack.
The question discomfits my father; he looks as if he’ll feel my forehead to make sure I’m not ill. “Tara and Clare are married, Bailey. They have their own families. They’ll declare themselves with their mates.”
“Oh, right.” I know that they got married—missing their post-mating ceremony receptions had been one of the few sacrifices I deeply regretted making when I left—but I still can’t quite get my head around my sisters being actual grown-ups.
Mother sees her opening and swoops in for the kill. “And next year, if the fates are willing, you’ll do the same.”
If the fates are willing. Whether or not I’m willing isn’t her concern.
I don’t address her remark. “I can’t wait to see Tara and Clare. And finally meet their mates.”
All I know about them is what I could learn from a few brief phone calls. My family wasn’t supposed to be in contact with me while I was away in the mortal world, but my sisters and I have always been rule breake
rs. Tara’s husband, Josh, went to school with us and now owns a social media company valued in the hundreds of millions. Clare’s mate, Julian, is a partner at my father’s firm, which Ashton hoped to be, back when he chose me for his future mate. I wonder if Father gave him a job as a consolation prize when I left.
I hear the drone of the majordomo announcing the names of the families as they enter the throne room, but we’re not close enough that I can make them out. Everyone in the foyer is joyous and friendly. Mother and Father chat with the couple behind them and I cast my gaze down the line.
Five years, and so much has changed that I don’t recognize any of the people around us.
When it’s our turn, we pass between huge, black marble pillars and pause beneath the enormous glass and steel chandelier sculpted into an effigy of the moon in all her phases.
“Thomas Dixon the third, his mate, Vivianne Harcourt-Dixon, and his daughter, Bailey Dixon,” the man’s voice booms. He’s a different majordomo than the man who previously held the position my entire life; yet another reminder that the world I walked away from has moved on in my absence.
As is the man standing on the dais.
I remember King Victor being a broad-shouldered sloucher with a well-groomed beard and a slight paunch, like an extra from How to Train Your Dragon dressed in an expensive suit.
The man we approach is not King Victor. This man, whoever he is, stands tall and straight. This man wears a tuxedo like the concept of tuxedos was invented because of him. I can’t look away from the sharpness of his clean-shaven jawline or the intense gray of his eyes, which lock on mine. His black hair is short and parted at the side, and a hint of silver touches its strands.
Mother, head down, nudges me and I remember to curtsey, wobbling a little. I can’t blame it all on being out of practice. The new king is so handsome he’s knocked the wind out of me.
“Rise,” the new king says, and his accent makes me homesick for London. “Do you remain faithful to the pack?”
I keep my eyes downcast as the three of us answer the ritual question. “Yes, my king and my pack leader.”
“And do you submit to the word of your king and pack leader?”
I can’t help but glance up, and heat floods my face as I find he’s looking at me while the three of us respond. When I tear my gaze quickly away, I still feel his willing me to meet it again. There’s a confidence about him that has nothing to do with his position, an aura that fills the space between us and makes the air heavy as I breathe it into my lungs.
“Yes, my king and m
y pack leader,” squeaks from my throat. I can barely catch my breath; I wonder how many people have passed out in front of him.
“Do you surrender your will for the good of the pack?”
That’s the question that trapped my parents in their loveless, boring marriage. It’s the question that will lead to becoming Ashton’s mate.
The question that will mean my expulsion from the pack if I don’t make my decision on the transformation, and soon. I can’t invoke the right again. My time is up.
But to avoid the passive-aggressive wrath of my mother, I’m compelled to say, “Yes, my king and my pack leader.”
The king motions my father forward, to the bottom of the dais steps. “As you would bleed for the pack, so would your pack shed the blood of your enemies.” The ancient creed, which always sounded so ruthless to my younger ears, is like a low, sensual promise in the king’s elegant voice. When he extends the royal signet ring for my father to kiss, I fixate on the veins on the back of the large, royal hand.
I remember to curtsey this time, and somehow stagger away, our family’s tribute over. We move toward the doors to the grand ballroom, but whatever lies beyond them doesn’t hold the same fascination as the man I just bowed before, the man to whom I ritually surrendered my will.
Did I imagine the way he seemed to focus solely on me as the three of us stood before him? Did he feel the charge crackling between us or did I invent it from a combination of nervousness and emotional confusion? I’ve never reacted so strongly to anyone at first sight. I can’t even decide if it’s a positive reaction or if he wildly intimidates me.
The majordomo calls the name of the next family entering the throne room, and I decide it’s safe to take one last, quick look back at the king while his attention is on them. But the moment I turn my head, I’m caught.
The king is watching me walk away.
