Chapter 21: Chosen

The salt crunched under my boots.

Delphine was still standing in the ring. I looked at her until she stepped out over the line, white-faced.

I turned to face Alaric.

He had not moved.

His grey eyes were wide open, and I saw the truth in them. He thought I had come to say goodbye.

"Wynne," he said, very low. "Don't. Not for the crown."

"I'm not here for the crown."

"You don't have to do this. You know what I am."

"I know exactly what you are," I said.

The three elders stood at my back.

I took a breath and said the words, loud enough for the back row.

"I, Wynne MacAulay, stand in this ring of my own will. No one speaks for me. No one has made me."

"I know there is no fated bond between us. I know you lied to me and I know why."

"I know you knelt in the snow for me, and I know you fought six wolves and never touched me."

"Before three elders and the Moon, I name Alaric Rooke as my mate."

The hall was silent.

"Alaric. Will you accept?"

He looked at me, and the cold public mask fell off his face.

"Wynne," he said.

"Say it."

"Yes." His voice cracked. "Yes. Yes."

Something opened in my chest.

It was warm. It started under my ribs and ran down my arms into my fingertips.

Dusk lifted her head and howled, inside me, one long note.

Then I smelled him.

I smelled cedar and smoke, and rain on cotton, and under it something that was me.

It was exactly what Agnes had described: my own skin on someone else. I couldn't tell where he stopped and I started.

I stared at him.

He was staring back, with his mouth open.

"Do you smell that?" he said.

"Yes."

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