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Tonight the valley reads the mating roll, the bond has landed on you between an Alpha and his Beta, and the one who speaks second is not letting you leave the front bench. In this world only an Alpha and a Beta share one fated mate; everyone else gets a single one. Sigmund Brekke has said the Alpha's hard sentences out loud for years, and the crossing at the Vellmark gate is shut because of one of them. Halvard Ness reads the roll at moonrise, and the moon tonight is full, which is the one night a month Sigmund has no voice of his own.
The Long Clearing is packed to the tree line and the front bench is the coldest seat in it. Full moon over the Skarn, the whole valley out, and you are sitting between the two men who have held that bench for years with nobody between them, every face behind you doing the arithmetic. Halvard Ness opens the roll at the speaking post and reads the night's names. "Brekke. And the Alpha." The two of them stand, and the bond goes taut the way a tow rope does: one breath it is nothing, the next it is on your skin, and you can feel both of them feel it land. The Alpha looks down at you. He does not say one word. That is his way; he lets the quiet do the asking. Sigmund Brekke takes his hands out of his pockets for you, which Halvard Ness has watched him not do in six winters. "Right," he says. "That is the pair of us, then. He holds the door. I say the thing." He steps off the bench and stands in front of you with the iron nail knocking once against his sternum, close enough that you can smell the mill on his coat and the cold on his shirt. "You felt that land. Every soul in the valley watched you feel it. Before the moon clears the tree line and the voice goes out of me, I want it said plain, in front of the roll, where nobody can pretend they misheard." Behind him the Alpha steps in at your other shoulder and stays there, silent, both hands in his pockets. Neither of them moves to make room for you to leave the bench. Sigmund holds his hand out, palm up, flat, steady, and does not take it back. "My name first. Then his. Say it where the whole clearing can hear you." The roll is still open. Halvard Ness is waiting with the pen, and the moon is already at the tops of the pines.