She Looks Just Like That Useless One

Aurora's POV

Cedric thought I had been touching myself for him.

So he wanted me again.

And once again I had to refuse. "Cedric, not until after the coronation. So I can only—"

"That's my fault. I'm rushing you. But the assembly is about to start — you need to rest properly."

He held out the cup of berry drink.

"Drink it. Rest a little. I'll take you to meet the elders."

I leaned in the doorway and watched his back recede. I was about to close the door when I saw him — Kaelen, standing against the wall in the shadow at the end of the corridor.

He turned his head slowly and looked at me.

His lips moved without sound.

"Don't drink it." I read it off his mouth.

Then he turned back into his room, and the closing of his door rang out sharper than it should have in the corridor.

I carried the berry drink inside and shut the door, and let myself slide down the door panel until I was sitting on the floor. My eyes went hot all at once.

I put my face into my knees and curled up small.

Rosalind's maid came to knock.

"Rosalind asks you to take tea with her." The maid kept her eyes lowered. "She says there are things a Luna ought to know before the coronation, and she'd like to explain them to you alone."

I closed the door and stood in front of the mirror for a while.

I had washed Kaelen's marks off again and again, scrubbed the skin red, and still that faint cedar scent came up into my nose, as though it were seeping out of my bones.

Go, or don't go. I had no choice.

If I refused Rosalind, I might as well tell her straight out that my conscience wasn't clean.

By the time I arrived, Rosalind was already at the low table by the window. A pot of berry tea, two cups, a dish of honey cakes untouched.

"Sit." She gestured at the chair across from her. "Cedric's gone to tally the full-moon offerings. The odds and ends before the assembly will keep him busy past counting. For now, it's just the two of us."

"There's a scent on you." She spoke at last. "Not a scent a young woman ought to carry."

Cold went through my fingertips.

"I took some herbs carelessly a while back. That's likely what it is."

Rosalind's mouth curved slightly. "There's a back alley down by the sea. The shops have no signboards at all. The owner takes payment in silver coin only. Do any of those sound familiar to you?"

My breath stopped for an instant.

She hadn't said a single precise word. But put together, the details pointed one way and no other.

That back alley, that owner, silver coin — the only road to the black market.

"I've never been anywhere like that." I held my voice steady.

Rosalind watched me. "Whether you've been, you know in your own heart."

The assembly bell struck once outside the window, dull and heavy. She rose, walked to the window, and stood with her back to me, her fingers resting lightly on the sill.

"The bloodline review is only the first gate. Don't forget — at the full moon the elders will put you at the center of the altar, and the moonlight will reveal the truth of your inner wolf. Whether your mark belongs to the Wolf King, and whether the Wolf King is your fated mate. If a single thing is wrong, the price is your life."

"What does any of this have to do with your asking me here?" I heard myself ask.

Rosalind walked back to the table. "Cedric's affection alone won't carry you through the bloodline review. The scent-blocker will get you past it, yes — but I'll warn you, use too much and your body breaks. I've seen people who used it three years or more. They'll never have children as long as they live. Have you ever heard of that?"

Rosalind knew about the black market. And she knew about the scent-blocker?

My hand shook badly. I stared at my own reflection in the cup, blurred and wavering in the tea.

"No. I haven't heard of it." I answered with what steadiness I could fake.

Rosalind smiled. "Well, now you have. Go on back."

As I turned to leave, she said one last thing at my ear: "A fated mate's mark can strengthen the effect — and lessen the side effects."

Was she arguing Kaelen's case for him? Or was I reading too much into it?

To find out whether what she and Kaelen said was true, I decided to go back to the black market for more of the drug.

Once outside, I didn't take the front. Too many people that way. I chose the back-hill path that ran down toward the sea.

With the scent-blocker wearing off, every few steps a wave of heat dropped through me. I quickened my pace, head down, almost at a run.

"Who's there?"

A voice came up out of the brush at the side of the path.

A werewolf I didn't know rose from the shade of the trees, nostrils flaring twice. His eyes landed on me and stayed.

"Have you… just been touching yourself?" He came toward me slowly, his gaze going darker. "That desperate? Doing it out here?"

I kept my voice as level as I could. "Step aside, please."

He grinned, and reached for my wrist.

I backed away and hit a tree trunk behind me. His palm came up and dragged across the inside of my waist — rough fingertips — and started lower.

My stomach turned over and over, nausea and heat churning together until I thought I'd vomit.

"Let go—"

"I'll give you what you want." He pressed in, one arm banding my waist. "Rather than playing with yourself, play with me—"

The words weren't out of his mouth before there was a dull thud, and the man who'd been about to have his way with me went down hard on the ground.

Kaelen stood in front of me, looking down at the werewolf curled up on the ground — crushing him the way you'd crush an ant.

I looked at the bloodstain that had been a man, and I shook.

Kaelen turned to look at me.

"You'd walk the forest path alone looking like that. Are you stupid."

He reached out and took my arm, and even through the cloth I could feel the heat of his palm.

"Come on."

He pulled me off the other way, half-dragging, half-steadying me, my feet floating under me.

The wind came through, and I smelled it — that cloying sweetness on my own skin tangled up with his cedar, until I was ashamed of myself.

At the end of the narrow path the ground dropped into a low slope, and past the slope was the edge of the pack's living quarters.

Kaelen pulled me down off the slope and around to a quieter track behind the stone houses. We passed a row of racks hung with curing hides; two old women sat at a doorway weaving wicker baskets, heads together over something.

My steps were light. Kaelen's were lighter.

The old women saw us anyway. Their voices dropped; their eyes followed the side of my face for a while, then they put their heads back together.

"…she looks so much like that useless one from before."

"Who?"

"That one with no inner wolf at all."

"Bad luck, that! Why bring her up for no reason? There's a show coming in a few days."

"What show?"

"The trial's opening again — first time in years. I hear that she-wolf Alpha Cedric brought back is to enter it. And I remember: a she-wolf who enters the trial has no road out unless her inner wolf is mighty beyond anything. No road at all."

"Tell me about it."