Chapter 20: The Winter Ball

I sent Conall a photograph of the dress three days before the Winter Ball.

It was dark red velvet with a low back, and the scar between my shoulder blades showed above the zipper.

He wrote back in under a minute.

That's the one. Wear it. I'm going to forget how to talk.

I wore it.

The ball was held in the lodge hall, the same hall where I had once told two hundred wolves about my surgery over scrambled eggs.

Someone had hung white lights across the beams. The long tables were pushed back, and a band played in the corner.

Last year I had stood at the head table for an hour, with a smile pinned on, waiting for a husband who was on the phone.

This year I stopped in the doors with my hand on his arm.

"You can go in first," Conall said. "It's your hall."

"No," I said. "We go in together. I want to walk in with you."

"Beta and Alpha?"

"Husband and wife. It's the part I'm choosing."

He swallowed, and he put his hand over mine, and we went in.

The room turned toward us, and it went quiet.

Then Penny whistled from the buffet, a loud two-finger whistle, and the whole hall laughed and clapped.

I danced.

I had not danced in five years.

Conall had never asked, and I had never made him.

The part of me that wanted to had gone quiet with the rest.

He took my waist in both hands and held me at a decent distance for a moment.

Then he pulled me against him, and the band played something slow.

"Say something," I told him.

"Your back," he said into my hair. "The whole hall can see it. I want to hit all of them."

"They can look. It's mine."

"I know." His mouth brushed my temple. "I know it is."

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