Ashton takes my hand again and lifts it to his lips. He brushes a kiss across my knuckles and says, "because they don't understand who we are, what we are. Now that you've seen what their lives are like, is it what you truly want?"
Do I truly want a life where I get to pick my own mate? To decide when to have children or if I even want them? In a world where people are free to love whomever they choose, regardless of breeding potential?
"Within the pack, we have stability." He leans in just slightly, his eye contact becoming more intense. "You will never be without a home, without food. They don't protect each other out there. I know you've seen it."
"I have," I admit reluctantly. I saw the consequences of simple mistakes, the uncontrollable havoc wreaked on long chains of human lives. The human world, even with all its flaws, showed me freedom that I couldn't have as part of the pack. But I don't know what it actually means to be human; I always had the option of going home.
I was just a tourist.
Ashton's phone chimes and his fishes it from his jacket pocket with a mumbled apology. "I have to leave. A late dinner meeting. That's something you'll need to prepare for, in our marriage. I work a lot and I'm gone often. But I did come to give you this—"
He reaches into his jacket pocket again and produces a black velvet clamshell box. With very little ceremony, he opens it to reveal a dazzling, princess cut diamond set in a diamond-studded platinum band.
"I—" I close my gaping mouth. I can't think of anything to say.
"Do you like it?" He studies my face for the answer.
I nod. "Yes, I'm just stunned. It's beautiful."
It might as well be a pair of handcuffs, but it's beautiful. I take the box from him and slide the ring onto my finger.
"Now, after the full moon, we really do need to get planning underway," he says.
"Planning?"
"For the mating rite."
I still have one more full moon before I'm obliged to transform and decide my fate once and for all. This year, the moon of my decision takes place on Lupercalia, the festival during which mating pacts are finalized. I can't be mated to Ashton if I haven't gone through at least one transformation, and our marriage can only take place on the night of Lupercalia. We'll have to wait an entire year. My sentence has been suspended.
"We have a year to hammer out the details," I say with a laugh of relief.
A relief that's instantly sapped by his slight frown and, "We have a month." I open my mouth to argue, but he goes on. "Because the festival and the full moon coincide, the king has issued a dispensation. The mating rite can take place before the transformation ceremony."
The room spins and I blink. It's a shock that I'm not on the floor when everything rights itself again.
Ashton hasn't noticed. He's looking at his phone. I'm still frozen when he glances up to move in and kiss my cheek. "I have to go. I'll have my mother contact Vivianne. They can get the ball rolling on the arrangements."
I smile tightly against the panicky throw-up rising in my throat, and I nod and pray he'll leave the room before I yak everywhere. When he's safely out of the room, I grab one of mother's crystal bowls from the mantle and empty my stomach into it. Trembling, I sink to the carpet and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, the diamond shining merrily on my finger.
A month. I have one month before I'm mated to Ashton forever.
The full moon is a holy time for werewolves. Much in the way humans might dress nicely and congregate at a house of worship, a werewolf pack gathers for their own ceremonies together. For the Toronto pack, the place we gather is about an hour and a half northwest of Toronto. Long before Canada was New France, back in the days when our ancestors fled northern Europe in longboats, a pack inhabited a small village in the area, on what is now two-hundred acres of unspoiled land we can safely roam as the creatures we become every full moon.
The transformation ceremony takes place in the ancient circle of standing stones built over five centuries before Columbus could erroneously claim the first European steps onto the North American continent. The three stones bear tributes to the gods of our pack: Fenrir, the wolf who will devour Odin at Ragnarök, Lycaon, the cruel king punished by Zeus, and Lupa, she-wolf mother of Romulus and Remus. Once, the circle stood in a forest clearing. Now, it's protected in a tall, crescent-shaped building with a copper roof that retracts to allow the moonlight in and the smoke from the ceremonial fires to escape, and a retractable wall that opens to the night air.