NEVA
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Holt arrived unannounced on a Sunday afternoon, and something in his careful expression told me, before he'd said a word, that whatever he carried wasn't simple.
"Maren and I have decided something," he said, finding Ryke and me in the yard, Ren playing nearby with Ziko's usual enthusiastic supervision. "We want to formally bond. Properly, the way you and Neva did."
I felt genuine warmth rise at the news.
"Holt, that's wonderful," I said.
"There's more," he said, something in his careful pause suggesting the complication he'd actually come to discuss. "Maren wants the ceremony held at her own territory. Where she's spent thirty years building her council standing, her community." He looked at Ryke. "It would mean bringing significant parts of our family there instead of hos
