Chapter 49: Who’s A Good Divine Boy?

Once upon a time, there was a panel of elders who decided every match and called every shot, and a Goddess who took one look and said, "Absolutely the fuck they are not." Down came her wolves to overturn the lot, and the mates the elders chose were not the mates that they got.

And that’s the bedtime version. Here’s what it actually looked like.

It started with emerald, ruby, and sapphire wolves erupting from the white flame. The Goddess sent her very best good boys.

Sit? No. Stay? Nay. Fetch? Only if fetch meant retrieving someone else’s mate and delivering them to the right person.

They poured across the clearing in a stampede of luminous fur and divine overruling, each one locking onto a draftee who had already been matched by the elders. The draftees numbered under five hundred and forty, that is. The ones who went after Nova were already matched by the Goddess.

The Goddess had looked at the elders’ seating chart and set it on fire. To be fair, the chosen mates didn’t seem that sad about it.

"Are we allowed to clap?" one of them whispered.

"I’m going to clap."

"Me too."

A Frostveil warrior who had been standing politely next to his elder-assigned match found himself being herded away from her by an emerald wolf with the body language of a bouncer who had been told to clear the floor. His assigned match watched him go with the visible relief of a woman who had been doing the math on faking her own death and had just received a pardon.

That relief was the kind that breaks your face open. The kind you can’t rehearse or fake. She pressed her hand to her mouth and her shoulders shook once, just once, and Nova understood because that woman had been standing next to a stranger the elders had assigned her to and she had just been freed by something bigger than all of them.

"ORDER. THERE WILL BE ORDER ON THIS SACRED GROUND."

The wolves of light did not, in fact, order. They continued doing exactly what they were doing with the indifference of a force that didn’t recognize the elder panel’s jurisdiction and never had.

"ALL DRAFTEES RETURN TO YOUR ASSIGNED PARTNERS IMMEDIATELY."

"THIS IS A DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE MATCHING PROTOCOL AND EVERY MATEBOND FORMED AFTER THIS POINT WILL BE REVIEWED BY THE FULL COUNCIL."

A ruby wolf was carrying his new mate vertical back to his section, the woman laughing against his chest while he walked past his grandmother on the elder panel without breaking stride. The elder looked at her grandson. Looked at the woman. Looked at the elder next to her and spoke loud enough for the clearing to catch every syllable.

"These matebonds will be declared illegitimate. Every single one. You will return to the partners you were assigned and we will get to the bottom of this interference before any marking occurs."

Nobody returned. Nobody looked at the panel. Nobody even slowed down. The wolves of light circled each new pair like guard dogs daring the elders to try something, and the elders did what elders do best when their authority has been publicly demolished by a campfire: they yelled louder at an audience that had stopped listening hours ago.

Paired handshake couples were broken apart. Eyes surged wolf-gold in both sexes across the clearing like a chain reaction that the elders could feel but could do nothing about.

There was zero chance all of these people were fated. Nova didn’t understand what was happening, outside of the certainty that some of these wolves already knew they should be with someone else and seemed relieved to finally have permission. Others were blindsided by it. But the wolves of light were connecting pairs with the confidence of a force that had been watching these people orbit each other for years and had run out of patience with the scenic route.

The men outnumbered the draftees because so many draftees had been rejected at this point. But the ones who were matched gladly accepted their fate, except Kai Starborne, who was standing with his arms crossed looking like the universe had just said ’pair up’ and he had said ’make me.’

The only draftees left unpaired were Celeste Starborne and Nova.

The flame settled back to its ten-foot height. White. Steady. Done.

Every matebond that had been formed tonight was a door opening, and even if Nova would never be a part of this, even if she was sent to the Lottery, it was worth every second and she would do it again.

The clearing was quiet for the first time in what felt like hours, but there were noticeably more smiles than frowns and the smiles were winning by a margin that made the silence feel warm instead of heavy.

Every Alpha at the front of their section was staring at Nova. The elders were staring at Nova. One of them leaned towards the umbrella elder and whispered something behind his hand, and the umbrella elder’s face changed in a way that made Nova’s stomach fold in half because the expression that landed there was not good.

There was silence in the clearing. The kind that settles after a storm passes and the wreckage is still steaming but the rain has stopped and the sky has made its decision.

The packs were evenly distributed. The corruption and the politics and the backroom handshakes and the elder-assigned pairings had been taken out of the equation by wolves made of light who didn’t give a damn about protocol, and what was left were Goddess-blessed matebonds pre-marked that Nova didn’t need to understand to know they would be stronger and better than any regular chosen match the elders could have brokered in a thousand years of trying.

Celeste was still standing in the spot where she was supposed to receive her chosen mate, waiting. Her chin was up. Her posture was perfect. Her patience was on a timer that the rest of the clearing could hear ticking.

Then the fire did something no one was expecting.