Chapter 16: The Bond Words

Danica's POV

The whole pack climbed the hill behind us with lanterns, and nobody said a word.

Snow lay thick on the grass of the ring, and the Moon Stone stood plain and grey among the pines.

Hester had put a wool shawl over my shoulders and a heel of bread in my pocket.

"For luck," she said. "Don't argue."

Ansel waited for me at the foot of the Stone with his hands bare.

At Greywater the Alpha had spoken the rite from an altar, with a basin and a dais and three hundred watching.

Here there was only a man in a canvas jacket, and a woman, and the cold.

"The words are short," he said quietly. "Say them or don't. Nobody here will think less of you."

"Say them first."

He took my hands in his.

"I give you a share of myself, and I take a share of you. What I lend, I do not take back. This thread has no knife in it."

His voice did not shake, and his hands did.

I looked at the ring of lanterns, and at Hester with her apron over her coat, and at the guard from Greywater.

He had stayed on at the lodge since the cabin, and he stood at the edge with his arm in its sling.

Then I said it back, word for word.

"I give you a share of myself, and I take a share of you. What I lend, I do not take back. This thread has no knife in it."

Something moved in my chest.

It was not a rope pulled out this time.

It was a line drawn in, warm and slack at first, and then tightening gently until it settled.

I felt his heartbeat, hard and quick, beside my own.

I felt his relief, and under it a fear he had never said aloud, and under that his stubborn, enormous joy.

The Stone lit silver from the base to the top, and every lantern in the ring flickered.

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