Page 2 of Curvy Sold Mate

She fixed the banner and climbed down—refusing to look at how the dress fell in the hall’s long mirrors.

“Liv.”

Caitlynn had followed her to the far end of the hall, past the tables, past the ward candles now burning steady in their iron holders. Her face was a mask of pure focus.

“The grounding token,” Caitlynn said. “I need it before we begin.”

“Which one?”

“Voss bloodline. Anything that is personal to the family line—it anchors my connection to the pack’s magical signature during the channeling. Without it, the invocation pulls from the territory’s ambient energy, which is stable but shallow. With a bloodline anchor, I can go deeper. The pairings will be cleaner.”

Olivia thought for a moment. “There’s a reliquary in the eastern vault. My grandmother’s. Kahn had it moved years ago—edge of the territory, near the old watchtower.”

“Can you get it?”

“Now?”

“Before the ceremony. I need time to attune to it.”

Olivia looked at the hall, at the list in her hand, at the hundred small details still undone, and the two hours left to do them.

“I’ll go,” she said.

“You don’t have to—”

“I’ll go. It’s twenty minutes out, twenty minutes back. The setup is handled.” She glanced at the clipboard, then set it down on the nearest table with a finality that felt like dropping armor. “Don’t let anyone move the ward candles. I measured the spacing.”

“Olivia.”

“I measured it twice.”

Caitlynn pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh. “Be careful.”

“It’s a storage vault at the edge of our own territory. I think I can manage.”

Olivia took the eastern path out of the compound, past the training yard where the morning shift was finishing drills, past the garden where the first wildflowers of the season had forced their way through the last of the frost. The air carried the bite of early spring—cold enough to sting the inside of her nose, clean enough to taste.

Her wolf moved as she crossed the tree line. It was a feeling she could not adequately describe, a prickling along the back of her neck that she couldn’t attach to a source. She paused at the edge of the trail and turned a slow circle. Trees, stone, the distant ridgeline grey against a sky that couldn’t decide whether it was overcast or merely thinking about it.

She kept walking. The trail narrowed through old-growth pines, their trunks dark with moisture, the ground soft with decades of shed needles. She knew this path—had run it in wolf form a hundred times, fast enough that the trees blurred and the only thing that existed was the ground under her paws and the territory singing in her blood.

Her wolf stirred again, stronger this time—a push against the inside of her chest, insistent without being specific, the animal equivalent of a hand gripping her sleeve.

Olivia stopped and listened. Wind through the canopy, a bird far off, the creek that ran along the eastern boundary, high with snowmelt. Nothing that shouldn’t be there, nothing she could point to and name.

She rolled her shoulders, exhaled through her nose, and kept walking.

The vault was close now—another ten minutes through the trees, past the old watchtower with its crumbling stone walls and the iron door that Kahn had re-sealed three years ago. The trail bent south. The light shifted as the canopy thickened, that deep green shade that made noon feel like dusk.

Her wolf pressed forward again, harder, a snarl building somewhere behind her sternum, and for the first time, the hair along her arms lifted.

She picked up her pace.

Chapter 2 - Viktor

Viktor counted exits before he counted people, and he’d never seen a reason to apologize for the priority.

Three from the great hall: the main doors, the service corridor behind the dais, and the narrow passage off the east wall that led to the kitchens and, beyond them, the courtyard. He’d mapped the sight lines from the platform where Kahn stood. He’d positioned two wolves at the tree line, three along the perimeter path, one on the watchtower roof with a clear view of the northern approach. He’d checked the ward anchors at dawn, walking the full circuit in the grey half-light while the compound slept. Wards were only as reliable as the last person who’d inspected them, and Viktor did not rely on other people’s inspections.