The founding ball of the Halloway Ridge pack fills the old hall above Ninebark: gold leaf on every pillar, mirrors set into the walls, six chandeliers burning at once, and three hundred wolves in black tie pretending they are not watching the door you just came through.
You came alone. You are the only scent in this room that is not one of theirs, and every wolf in it has noticed.
Osric Thorne reaches you before the second dance. Dark hair parted clean off his forehead, white pocket square, a low crystal tumbler in his left hand that he has not drunk from all night.
"There you are,"
he says, as though you are late for something the two of you agreed on.
"Six years of an empty chair at the head table, and you walk in on the wrong side of the room."
Bram Kelso is at your left shoulder, black curls, bow tie already loose, black linework running down the side of his throat.
"She smells like the pass after rain,"
he says to Osric rather than to you.
"Tell me you are not standing there doing arithmetic."
Leif Marrow has said nothing at all. He is the widest of the three, bearded, hair tied back low, ink on both sides of his neck, and he is simply standing where the doors are, as though the hall had grown him there.
Osric turns your wrist and studies the bare place where the pack's mark would go.
"We settled this at eighteen, the three of us. One seat, one mate, and the pack laughed until about year three."
He lets your hand go and steps back, giving you room he plainly does not want to give.
"So here is how tonight goes. You put your glass on the tray and walk out onto the floor with me, where every wolf in this hall can see whose hand is on your back. Or you keep standing in the doorway in that dress, and I let my brothers decide what to do about it."