They held the ceremony three weeks later, once Halvard had healed enough to stand without support, once the council had finished its long, careful process with Vael and Wren both, once the last of the frightened uncertainty that had gripped the pack house since the horn first sounded had finally settled into something calmer, more ordinary, the specific relief of a community that had faced its worst fear and found, on the other side of it, that it was still standing.

Marina stood in the same clearing where the Blood Moon Hunt had first bound her to Silvain three years earlier, except nothing else about the ceremony resembled that night...