Mate Me in Moonlight

Chapter 113

POV: Adeline

Tradition said they had to separate.

I understood the reasoning—something about approaching the ceremony with clear minds, about coming together as individuals before binding as one, about honoring the old ways that had guided pack pledging ceremonies for centuries. Understanding didn't make it easier.

Aiden stayed in the packhouse. I went to Elara's hut, a small cottage at the edge of the compound where the healer kept her herbs and her silence and her connection to things older than memory.

The door closed behind me, and I felt the distance immediately.

It ached.

Through the bond, I could sense him—a constant presence at the edge of my awareness, warm and steady and there. But the physical separation created a hollow space in my chest, a phantom limb sensation of reaching for something that wasn't close enough to touch.

I pressed my hand against my sternum, feeling my own heartbeat, and sent a pulse of reassurance through the connection. I'm here. I'm okay. I miss you.

His response came back wordless—a wave of longing, of anticipation, of love so fierce it made my breath catch.

One night. Just one night.

It felt like forever.

Elara didn't rush.

She moved through the preparations with the unhurried certainty of someone who had performed these rituals many times, for many wolves, across many years. The hut smelled of dried herbs and woodsmoke and something sweeter underneath—moonflower, maybe, or the particular scent of sacred things.

"The bath first," she said, gesturing toward a copper tub that steamed gently in the corner. "Water from the spring. Salt from the eastern shores. Oils blessed under the last full moon."

I undressed without self-consciousness—modesty meant little among wolves—and stepped into the water. It was warmer than I expected, silky against my skin, carrying a weight that felt more than physical.

Elara's hands were gentle as she worked oils through my hair, her fingers tracing patterns against my scalp that might have been massage or might have been something older.

Words fell from her lips like water over stones. The old tongue—I recognized fragments from ceremonies I'd witnessed as a child in Ash Hollow, sounds that meant blessing and binding and beloved. The meaning slipped past my conscious mind and settled somewhere deeper.

"Nervous?"

The question came as she helped me from the bath, wrapping me in cloths that had been warmed by the fire.

"Terrified," I admitted.

Elara smiled—not mocking, not dismissive. Understanding.

"Good," she said. "It should feel like something. The wolves who walk to their pledging without fear are the ones who don't understand what they're promising." She guided me to a cushion near the hearth, began combing through my damp hair with slow, careful strokes. "Terror means you know the weight of it. Means you're taking it seriously."

"What if the terror never goes away?"

"Then you learn to carry it alongside the joy." Her hands stilled for a moment, resting on my shoulders. "That's what all the best things are, child. Terror and joy, wound together so tight you can't separate them. Love. Pack. Family. They're all the same—precious because they can be lost, beautiful because they're fragile."

I closed my eyes and let her words sink in.

Later, wrapped in soft clothes and settled on the narrow bed Elara had prepared, I felt him.

Through the bond—awake, restless, aching the same way I ached. The distance between us hummed like a plucked string, resonant with wanting.

I pressed my hand against my heart and thought toward him, not words exactly, but something close.

Tomorrow.

His response wrapped around me like arms I couldn't feel. Warmth. Promise. The fierce, unwavering certainty that had drawn me to him from the beginning.

Tomorrow.

I tried to imagine it—standing before the pack, speaking the words, feeling the bond complete itself in whatever way pledging completed it. The future felt enormous, overwhelming, too big to fit inside my chest.

But tomorrow it would be real.

Tomorrow, forever would begin.

I didn't sleep.

The bed was comfortable enough, the hut warm and safe, the ritual preparations meant to settle my mind and spirit. But every time I closed my eyes, I felt him—awake in the packhouse, probably pacing again, counting the hours the same way I was counting them.

Through the bond, I knew he wasn't sleeping either.

We lay in our separate beds, in our separate spaces, and waited for dawn together. Apart but connected. Alone but not lonely.

Tomorrow, I thought again, and felt him thinking it back. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after.

The night stretched endless around us. We waited.