I laugh. “Men don’t reject their alpha mates, Jess. I mean, okay, it’s been known to happen, andtechnicallyanyone can refuse to mate with anyone. But no guy would refuse an alpha partnership. It would basically be refusing to try to conceive a child—and what woman would want him after that! He’d be alone forever.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Jess says.
“Come on,” I tell her. “I want to get out there. The moon is high.” Mating ceremonies are always performed under the full moon. It’s tradition.
We leave the tent and step out into the moonlight, and as we do, something strange happens. My heart flutters, seems to skip a beat. An electric shiver comes through me. I feel it pass through my body like a tremor. This has happened a few times recently, and it’s always a little bit alarming.
It’s just nerves. I’m sure that’s all it is. Tonight is going to be the biggest and most important night of my life. Of course I’m nervous.
There’s nothing wrong with me. And my life is about to change forever.
I hurry over to join the line of women waiting for their alpha mate assignments.
Chapter 2
EMLYN
I’veseenthisceremonyonce a year going back as long as I can remember. I know every word of it by heart. But even so, this year is different because I’ve never been one of the women waiting to be assigned a mate.
I’ve never stood here in the line facing the men of the pack while our alpha, Bruce, spoke the words of the ritual. I’ve never listened with the knowledge that what happened tonight would change my life forever.
Beside me, I feel Jess grope for my hand. I thread my fingers through hers. I know how nervous she is—but I’m not. I’m just excited. This is going to be the best day of my life.
My heart does that little flutter in my chest again as the moonlight washes over me. I shrug the sensation off; it’s just nerves.
Bruce strides into the center of our clearing, between the line of men and women. He raises his hands and immediately is greeted by silence. No one would ever dare speak when the alpha is about to begin his address.
“Welcome, everyone, to another mating night,” he says. “And a special welcome to the young men and women who reached their twenty-third birthday in the past year and will be assigned their alpha mates tonight.” He surveys the five of us women who stand shoulder to shoulder, then turns and looks at the men across from us.
And then, turning in a slow circle, he takes in the entire pack around us.
“Every year,” he says quietly, “our pack grows older.”
This is met with silence. We all know what he means, and yet the story is an important part of the ceremony. He’s reminding us of why tonight is the greatest night for our pack.
“In the first year following the Lunar Reversal,” he says, “our pack had a full generation of children. We counted ourselves lucky then. We called ourselves survivors because we had managed through strength and cunning to evade the natural disasters and wild elements that eliminated so many after the Moon Casters did their evil.”
I look up at the moon. It looks perfectly normal tome, of course, but the Lunar Reversal happened twenty years ago. I don’t have any memory of what things were like before. My mother, before she died, told me that the other side of the moon used to face the Earth. She told me that it was farther away from us too, demonstrating by holding up her thumb. She told me that when she was a child, she could blot out the moon by covering its position in the sky like that.
I hold up a fist now, and the moon still shines around the edges of my hand.
It’s the only moon—the only sky—I’ve ever known. But even so, I know every time I look up at it that it isn’t right. The Moon Casters violated the natural position of the moon when I was just a baby.
“It took us several years to understand what we now know and accept,” Bruce said. “For reasons we don’t comprehend, the Inverse Moon has affected our ability to bear children. In the twenty years since the reversal took place, only six new children have been born to us.”
This time I’m not the only one looking away from my alpha. Everyone’s eyes find the children. When I was younger, we came to the ceremony with family or sought out our friends. But now because our few children are so precious, they’re minded constantly by Bruce’s mate, Melinda. We can’t risk that a parent would decide to try to leave the pack with a child.
“The Moon Hunters are a proud pack,” Bruce says. “We survived the Lunar Reversal, when so many were killed. And we will survive whatever blight has caused us to struggle to produce our next generation. We’ll survive by creating the best and strongest mate bonds possible, giving each of you the best chance to produce children who can survive in this new world.”
I survey the men standing across from me.
As usual, my eyes go right to Victor. Tall, fair-skinned, blond hair that he keeps cropped close. Even though I know that tonight is about my alpha mate, he’s the only one I can’t wait to be with. After this ceremony, I’m allowed to mate with anyone I want, as long as I go to my alpha mate’s bed when I am most fertile. But no matter what, I am determined to mate with Victor.
“When I call your name,” Bruce says, addressing the women now, “step forward to receive your mate.”
My heart skips again. This time it feels like it’s beating too quickly. It feels like my blood is rushing through my body, moving too fast, like a river rushing downstream. Can anxiety really cause such a thing?
I’m not even that nervous.