What Cain drew out of his coat was not a ring.
It was flowers. Wildflowers a fistful of them, roots and dirt and all, exactly like the terrible bouquet he'd brought to my door back at the lodge, when the war was still on and the courtship had barely started. Except these he'd clearly gathered with more practice. Fewer weeds. Only one thistle, which I suspected was on purpose now, a joke between us grown into a language.
"I know what you're expecting," Cain said. "A ring. A grand thing. The true Alpha of Crescent Hollow proposing to his Luna with all the ceremony a reclaimed throne can muster." He shook his head. "But that would be a king giving his territory a Luna. And I already did that I marked you for a crown, in front of my whole club, when it served a kingdom. You've spent this who
