Wren
Two weeks before the Flower Moon, the forty women summoned me south for the fitting, and the men were formally banned.
Mira ran the expedition like a military operation she'd been planning since we were nine. The bridal defense perimeter, she called it: me, her, Selene, Berta, and Maren, one wagon, two days, and a standing threat that any groom caught following would spend his wedding night in the stables. Caius tried anyway, obviously. He made it four miles disguised, poorly, as a supply driver before Berta, without even turning around, said, "Go home, Ashford," and he went, and the story reached the boutique before we did.
Because that was the destination. The boutique. The one from the beginning, from the terrible beautiful morning after my world ended, where a man I'd just star
