On My Drowing Day, He Announced His Bonding to Her Chapter 01
The Groom’s Mark showed up on my porch the morning the whole Styx Pack came around to congratulate me.
Every three years, the River Groom picked himself a bride. Whatever unmated she–wolf got chosen had to wear a blood–soaked veil, ride in a black coffin, and go under in Black Hollow River at midnight.
Nobody who went under ever came back up.
I found John that same afternoon with our old Bonding Vow in my hand, ready to make him keep the promise
he’d been sitting on for seven years.
“John. Let’s bond. For real, this time.”
“The minute we finish the Mark in front of the Elders, the Groom’s Mark goes void. We get forever. I swear on the Moon Goddess, I’ve been waiting on this day too long already.”
He threw the vow straight into the fire.
“Violet, you’re really pulling out some old ghost story just to get me to mark you?”
“I told you. Scarlett’s wolfhound just died after seven years with her. I need to be there for her right now.”
“We’ll bond. Just not tonight.”
His phone buzzed before he even finished the sentence. Scarlett, calling.
“John, I can’t stop thinking about Lily. Can you come sit with me?”
He reached over and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, playing gentle.
“Give it a few days, okay? Scarlett and I go back to
grade school. I can’t just bail on her.”
I’d loved this man for seven years.
And somehow I still ranked below a dog Scarlett had had for exactly as long.
Her crying came through the phone in these broken little gasps.
“John, I dreamed about Lily again.”
“She was just lying there at the edge of the territory,
soaking wet, staring at me.”
“Please, John. Can you come check on me? I’m scared.”
He was already grabbing his keys.
I stood up and caught his wrist.
“John. Seven years. Why won’t you walk two minutes
down the road with me and let the Elders finish the
Bond?”
He shook me off.
“Violet. Lily just died. Scarlett needs me a hell of a lot more than you do right now.”
I stood there frozen, tears dripping straight onto the VOW.
Seven years back, Lily had been a stray I’d fished out of a drainage ditch.
I was deep in training for the Pack guard selection that year, skipping meals so I’d have enough left over to buy her jerky.
She used to curl up against me and lick my fingers half to sleep.
Then Scarlett showed up.
All it took was one “aw, she’s so cute” out of her mouth.
And John handed Lily right over.
“Scarlett’s out there alone at the edge of the territory.
She’s scared. Let her keep the dog.”
“You’ve got the selection coming up anyway, Violet. A
dog’s just going to throw you off.”
“Once you pass, we’ll raise her together. Promise.”
I believed every word.
The day I made the guard team, Scarlett showed up with Lily to “celebrate.”
Lily didn’t even know me anymore. She snarled at me
like I was a stranger off the street.
Scarlett just laughed it off. “Good thing I took her, or
you’d have lost your focus and blown the whole thing.”
My chest hurt so bad I couldn’t get a full breath in.
She was mine.
You two just took her.
And John, so breezy about it: “Scarlett was only trying to help you out.”
Now Lily was dead, and somehow Scarlett was the
saddest wolf in the whole Pack.
He tucked my hair back again, the exact same move
he’d used on me a thousand times before.
“Violet. Don’t make this a whole thing.”
“Scarlett and I have history. I can’t turn my back on that.”
“Once she’s better, I’ll bond with you. I mean it.”
I looked him straight in the eye.
“And if I’m at the bottom of Black Hollow River in three days?”
He went quiet for a second.
“Violet. You’re a Pack guard. It’s beneath you,
dragging out that old drowning story to guilt me into
something. Stop using it to back me into a corner.”
“We’ll bond. Just not now.”
The door shut behind him, and the only light left in
that room came from the fire dying out in the hearth.
I couldn’t tell if he really didn’t believe in the River
Groom, or if he just flat out didn’t want to bond with me.
Either way, I knew one thing for certain. Three days
from now, he could drain that whole river bone dry and still never find me.