"I try to hold the top closed over my cleavage. "Maybe we need to put a button or—"
"A button? On a ceremonial robe?" She shakes her head. "Let's not lead a fashion rebellion."
"I know we've done things a certain way for a long time, but it's not like buttons are a fad. We could probably adopt them and not risk the downfall of the pack," I say with a derisive snort I can't hold back.
"Your mate has to be able to take it off of you," she says.
It's all in a day's work for her, but talking about the actual act of mating as part of the ceremony makes me profoundly uncomfortable, especially since we're talking about Ashton being the guy doing the undressing. I try to laugh it off. "Look, I'm not going to claim my fiancé is the smartest guy ever, but I think he can handle buttons."
Melissa's expression falls, and suddenly I'm not sure we're having the same conversation. Her eyes dart toward the curtain, hardly a soundproof barrier between us and the women beyond it, and she lowers her voice. "Do you know what happens at the mating ceremony?"
I shake my head slightly; if I move it too much, the dizziness is going to come back.
She breathes in sharply then goes back to adjusting the neckline of the garment. "We have plenty of room to let this out, so it closes all the way. Nobody wants to see a bride spilling out of her robe on the way to the chamber."
That does nothing to make the dread go away. I zone out, staring at my own reflection in the mirror as Melissa tucks and pins and adjusts. I want nothing more than to rip the damn robe off and flee from the studio entirely, but the unspoken questions raised by this stranger's remarks will just follow me.
When I'm appropriately covered, Melissa takes me out to display her handiwork to Mother and Mrs. Daniels—both of whom remark how unfortunate it is that I've gone up a size, like I've got a fatal disease—and they approve the changes that need to be made. I'm little more than a hanger.
After I've changed into my normal clothes again and we're off to what promises to be a very awkward lunch with Mrs. Daniels, I pull my phone from my purse and text Tara.
You need to tell me everything about the mating ceremony.
The only thing I know about the ceremony is that the couples whose pacts are sealed at Lupercalia gather before Lupa's monolith to be anointed with blood from the day's sacrifices. Then, acolytes take them to the ancient chambers beneath the huge mound built by our ancestors. That's where the spectators' part is finished, and they all go off to enjoy the rest of the Lupercalia celebrations. Nobody has bothered to tell me what happens after I disappear down that torch-lit path to the mound.
Three little dots appear on my phone screen then vanish. They appear again, they vanish again, over and over as Mother complains to me about Mrs. Daniels's coldness and how horrible it will be to sit down to a meal with her. I pretend to listen but it doesn't matter. Mother will air her grievances to a blank wall, just so long as she can complain out loud.
Finally, Tara sends a return message. It just says:
I'll come over tonight.
That doesn't reassure me at all.
I'm in my room when Tara arrives, and she chirps into the intercom that she's coming up. Even as kids, we never had to share our space with each other, but we're all in the same hall, which father referred to as "the girls' wing." Even though Tara and Clare have moved out, their bedrooms are still there, though they've been redecorated a bit to remove fairy lights and school trophies.
My door creaks open and I sit up on my bed, tossing aside my book. "Hey."
"Hey," she says, and sighs deeply, sliding her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and rocking on her heels.
"That bad, huh?" I try to laugh as I swing my legs over the side of the bed, but the mood in the room is somewhere between "right before you find out grandma died" and "the sex talk with your parents."
Not that I've experienced either; our grandparents are all still alive and probably have a good hundred years left, and Mother has probably never even said the word "sex" out loud.
"You can sit down," I say, rolling my eyes. "Stop acting like you're here to break bad news."
"I thought everything about your mating ceremony would be bad news," she counters, heading toward the bed. She doesn't sit down, but throws her whole body across the middle, pillowing her chin on her hands. "Especially after the whole dinner thing."
"The dinner thing was—" I stop myself. I don't know if she'll run off and tell Josh all the details. "Not as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be."
I wonder if I should tell her what is partially the truth: Nathan wanted to meet me because we both invoked the Right of Accord. But that's not why she's here, so I hold onto it as an excuse for later.
"Mother said you went to Frobisher's today, so I assume the mating pact is still…" she trails off, waiting for my confirmation.
"Unfortunately. So, I need you and everyone else to stop being cryptic about the ceremony. Because I'm starting to think I'm going to have to bite the head off a lizard or something." I force a little laugh.
Tara groans and sits up. "You know, they should tell us about it in school when we have the whole 'your changing body' talk."
That makes it sound a lot worse than lizard heads. "Did Mother tell you?"
"She did. She'll probably tell you, too, the night before the ceremony. But I would have appreciated some lead time, so I'll tell you now." As if we're still kids, she double checks to make sure the door is closed. "You know the part where all the couples go to the ceremonial chambers, right?"
"At the mound," I confirm with a nod. "Yeah."
She sits cross-legged, wriggling her toes in her painfully corny printed snowflake socks. "After the acolytes lead you and Ashton and the other—"
"No!" I wave my hands. "Depersonalize this, please."
"Okay, okay." She rolls her eyes. "After the acolytes lead all the couples into the mound, everybody gathers in this open part in the middle. I swear, the full moon lines up directly with the hole in the top. I don't know how they managed to engineer that so long ago, without telescopes or—"
"The ceremony."
"Excuse me, it's just really cool." She scowls at me before continuing. "There's another monolith to Lycaon in the center circle, and all the couples are anointed with blood from a basin at its feet. Then the brides are separated from the grooms and taken to the ceremonial chambers."
"There's more than one?" I imagined the inside of the ancient, earth-topped mound to be one big, open space.
"There's a bunch. They're not big. They're like…cells in a medieval monastery or something."
"I don't spend a lot of time in medieval monasteries," I remind her. "But do go on."
"Fine. They're like…" She pauses to think, then brightens. "They're about the size of the guest bathroom downstairs. There aren't any windows, but there's this iron grate thing overhead that lets the moonlight through. And there's a smaller grate in the door but it's so dark in there it's not like you can see out very well."
I'm claustrophobic just imagining it.
"Anyway, inside there's a post with manacles, and the acolytes lock you in those—"
What?
"Hold on. Manacles?" I clamp my hand over my wrist then repeat the motion with the opposite ones.
"Do you see why I'm telling you now, and not the night before? Imagined how freaked out I was," Tara says with a shudder. "But seriously, it sounds worse than it is. It's actually kind of…sexy."
"Our definitions of sexy differ," I say, trying not to betray how fully disgusted I am at the thought of it. "Or maybe getting chained up in a dirt hole is hotter when you're actually attracted to your mate."
She shakes her head firmly. "Trust me, I was not into Josh at the time, and it was still pretty hot. I don't know how to explain it, but once you're anointed and the moon is out, it's like the werewolf part takes over. You want to mate."
I can't imagine a primal urge strong enough to make me want to mate with Ashton.
"I have no idea what the guys are doing while this is going on," Tara confesses. "Nobody's ever mentioned it and Josh said it was private. If I was supposed to know, then I would know."
"Where have I heard that before?" I ask wryly.
She nods in commiseration. As kids, all of our questions about ceremonies or religion were answered with some variation on that theme.
"He's right, though," she says, as if it's completely natural for one's mate to give such a patronizing answer. "Anyway, whatever they do, the brides just wait in their cells until the grooms get back. They come into the cell and—don't freak out—they strip you and administer ceremonial lashes."
"Like at the festival?" That seems extremely silly. I will definitely not be able to keep from laughing if Ashton bursts into the chamber and starts hitting me with a rawhide strip, the way the thrall acolytes chase women around at the party. It's always so goofy, and it doesn't hurt. It's just a jokey tradition for good luck.