The preparation for the Luna presentation began the way most things in Shadowmere began — practically, without ceremony about the ceremony, which was Darius's specific approach to things that mattered to him.
He told me what it involved.
The gathering. The territory's pack representatives — not all five hundred of Shadowmere, the compound wolves plus the outer-territory delegates, all of them who wanted to come. The formal acknowledgment — the Alpha King before his territory, naming his mate, making the bond part of the record. Not a wedding. Not a coronation. Something older than both, specific to the wolf community's way of understanding what a bonded pair meant to the collective.
"And then?" I asked.
"And then you're the Luna," he said. "Officially. In the territory's memory." He pa
