"Saying you won't mate with me now, that's just anger talking."
"This ring is the one you gave me before my first campaign. I'm leaving it with you. On our mating day, you'll tie it on me yourself."
He thought that lowering his tone and producing an old keepsake would be enough to coax me down the steps he'd so graciously laid out.
Where did he get that kind of confidence?
Fenris said his piece and left. The scent of woodsmoke and scorched earth lingered in the room long after the door closed, and beneath it that acrid note of decay I hadn't noticed in my previous lives. My wolf turned away from it.
I picked up the moonstone ring and tossed it into the painter's supply case.
"Miss, this looks far too valuable. I couldn't possibly keep it."
The painter fished the ring out carefully and held it back to me.
I waved him off. "It's yours."
"Do a good job on the portrait. If I'm selected, there'll be more where that came from."
The painter thanked me over and over.
"A beauty like you, Miss, is certain to be chosen."
I smiled and said nothing.
In the days that followed, while I waited for word from the Moonhold Citadel, Fenris came calling constantly.
Every visit, he brought armfuls of gifts.
Moonstone-studded hairpieces, bolts of the finest silk fresh from the southern territory looms, and all manner of rare curiosities, until they spilled across my courtyard in heaps.
I stared at the mountain of offerings, lost in thought.
My mother took my silence for hesitation. "Seraphina dear, are you having second thoughts?"
"Fenris is clearly still devoted to you, and you haven't been selected yet. There's still time to fix things. Just say the word and we'll arrange a mating ceremony, do it properly..."
I knew my mother had always been fond of Fenris.
Growing up, anything she made for me, she made a second one for the Vargr den.
Winter pelts, summer shirts, nightclothes, boots and wrappings.
All sewn by her own hand, stitch by stitch.
She'd loved him like a second pup.
She never could have imagined that Fenris would prove so heartless, that he would bring ruin on every last member of our pack.
I wrapped my arms around her and said softly, "He has feelings for someone else."
She asked who.
I shook my head. "All you need to know, Mother, is that he is not the right wolf."