After My Mate Marked His Best Friend’s Widow

The forest smelled like wet pine and frost the morning everything ended.

I ran at the back of the pack, the way I always did. Sable kept my pace easy under the trees, her black fur slipping between trunks like ink through water. The other wolves of Crescent Hollow loped ahead in a loose, happy pack — grey and brown and tawny — their tongues out, their breath steaming. A normal dawn run. A normal Tuesday.

Except for him.

Hugh Brooks stood at the edge of the clearing in human form, in a dark coat with the royal crest stitched at the shoulder. The Lycan Prince. Rhett's commanding lord. He had come down from the border outpost on what he called a routine inspection, and our Alpha had nearly tripped over his own feet bowing.

I had only seen the prince twice before, and never this close. He was tall in a way that did not need to announce itself. His eyes tracked the pack with quiet precision, and when they passed over me, they did not linger. Good. I preferred not to be looked at.

I shifted behind a stand of cedar and pulled on the clothes I'd left folded on a stump. My pendant — my mother's silver Healer's crest — was cold against my collarbone when I slipped it back over my head. I pressed my palm to it the way I always did. A small habit. A small prayer.

The pack scattered to drink at the stream. I walked toward my usual log, the long fallen pine where I sat to catch my breath while Sable settled.

There was a tablet on the log.

It was thin and silver, royal-issued, the screen still bright. I almost called out — *Your Highness, you forgot* — but my eyes caught on the image before my mouth could move.

A hall of white marble. Chandeliers. Rows of court werewolves in formal silver.

And Rhett.

My Rhett, in a black ceremonial coat I had never seen, his hair longer than when he'd left, his face — God, his face — open and soft and shining the way it had not shone for me in five years, maybe longer. He was bending over a woman in a cream gown. His hand cupped her jaw. His mouth was at her throat.

The caption read: *Beta Rhett Martinez, Crescent Hollow, marks Madeleine Perry — widow of fallen warrior Cole Perry — in honored Mate Ceremony, Capital Court.*

Mate Ceremony.

Mark.

The word *mark* turned over in my head like a stone in a stream and would not sink.

Sable's howl tore up through me before I understood it was coming. Not a sound out of my mouth — a sound *inside,* keening, raw, the way a wolf cries when she has been gutted and left to find out about it slowly. My knees softened. I caught the pine trunk with one hand. The other went to my pendant and closed around it so