Destined Reunion novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Eve
The night before my mating ceremony, my future alpha asked my permission to sleep with someone else.
He did it in the garden of the Big House at Silver Fir.
Paper lanterns hung from the trees, put up by the women for tomorrow's celebration.
Adán Caballero stood by the fountain, wearing a leather jacket.
His arm was draped over the shoulders of Griselda Cano, his childhood friend.
She wore a tight red dress, her copper hair loose, with a catlike smile on her face.
I came down the steps in my linen rehearsal dress, holding a glass of water.
"Salomé," Adán said. "Glad you came. We need to talk."
"Go ahead."
He scratched the back of his neck, nervous.
Griselda looked me up and down with sweet patience.
"Tomorrow I'm marrying you," Adán said. "And I swear I want to."
"I know."
"But I have a fear."
"What?"
"That twenty years from now, I'll regret never having been with a woman like Griselda."
There was a silence.
The fountain kept spilling its water.
"Like Griselda?" I asked.
"Fierce. What she is. What I've always wanted and never dared to ask for."
Griselda lowered her gaze with false shyness.
"Don't take it the wrong way, Salo," she said. "These things happen between friends."
"Between friends."
"One night," Adán said. "Just one. After that, I'll be faithful to you forever. You'll be the irreplaceable Moon of Silver Fir."
I looked at him.
His eyes were blue, honest, convinced.
He was serious.
He wasn't a bad man.
He was a spoiled man, one nobody had said no to since he was five years old.
I thought about my twenty-six years.
About seven years of arranged courtship, of dinners with my future father-in-law, of ceremony rehearsals, of keeping quiet and smiling.
I thought about a letter that never arrived.
About a face I'd stopped looking at from across the river.
I took a deep breath.
"Fine," I said.
Adán blinked.
"Fine?"
"Have a good time."
"Really?"
"Really."
Griselda opened her mouth, then closed it again.
She hadn't expected it to be that easy.
Adán took my hands.
"Thank you. Thank you, Salo. You're incredible."
He kissed my forehead, like a good little girl.
Then he scooped Griselda up in his arms, laughing.
Before he crossed through the garden gate, he turned back to me with a crooked, satisfied conqueror's smile.
"Tonight you're free to find another wolf too," he said. "I won't object."
He said it like a joke.
As if he couldn't imagine I was capable.
"Thanks," I said. "I won't have to look far."
But he was already heading down the path with Griselda hanging from his neck, and he didn't hear me.
I was left alone by the fountain.
The glass of water trembled in my hand.
I didn't cry.
What I felt wasn't pain.
It was a strange lightness, like when a rope you've been holding for a long time finally gets cut.
I set the glass on the edge of the fountain.
I took off my rehearsal shoes and walked barefoot through the garden, to the back gate.
I took the forest path.
It was a clear April night, with a full moon over the moor and mist tangled among the trees.
I walked for half an hour, through ferns and frailejones, my dress clinging to my legs with the damp.
I knew every stone.
Every year, on the eve of my birthday, I came to this path, without knowing why.
I'd sit for a while by the boundary river, looking at the other shore.
I'd never crossed.
That night, I did.
The boundary river is a wide thread of water over smooth stones, separating the lands of Silver Fir from those of Black Rock.
For three generations, the two packs hadn't spoken a word to each other.
There, on a large rock, between the mist and the moonlight, stood a figure.
A man.
With his back to me, wearing a dark coat, hands in his pockets, staring at the water.
My heart stopped.
I recognized him by his shoulders, by the way he tilted his head.
By his scent, which reached me on the wind: wet wood and smoke.
I hadn't seen him in eight years.
Not since the Two Packs Festival, when I was eighteen and he was twenty-four, and we danced a single song before our parents pulled us apart.
"Jacinto," I said.
He turned slowly.
His green eyes gleamed in the dark.
He had more gray in his beard, a new scar on his forearm, and a harder jaw.
But his gaze was the same.
"Salomé."
He stood still, as if afraid I was a mirage.
"I come every year," he said, his voice hoarse. "On the eve of your birthday. To this rock."
"Me too."
"We never crossed paths."
"I never crossed."
"Neither did I."
We each took a step toward the water.
The stones gleamed under the moon.
"Tomorrow is my ceremony," I said.
"I know."
"With Adán Caballero."
"I know."
My voice was trembling.
"Tonight he told me I was free to find another wolf."
Jacinto's eyes darkened.
"He said that?"
"Yes."
I crossed the river.
The cold water rose over my ankles, over my calves, and I felt nothing.
I came out on the other side, barefoot, soaked, and stopped in front of him.
A foot away.
I could smell his skin.
I lifted my face.
"Alpha Jacinto," I whispered, holding his gaze. "Tonight, make me yours. Please."
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