"You have always been selfish but this has gotten out of hand Ava " Her mother spat at her, looking at her with so much disgust that Ava physically flinched.
"But mother yesterday when we were in the kitchen you told me to... Another heated slap landed on her left cheek before she could get out the rest of the words, Hazel stood infront of her this time, her eyes shooting daggers at Ava, " You should be ashamed of yourself Ava, you not only disgraced yourself, you dragged me into your selfish schemes, Hazel shook as she said this, tears running down her cheek as she walked closer to varder, I'm so sorry your highness, yesterday when my sister told me her plans to escape, I wanted so badly to tell someone but she threatened to hurt our mother if I did so, she forced me to help her and I had no choice because I was scared she would do something drastic like what she did today.
Please forgive me your highness, I never meant for any of this to happen".
Rossana went on her knees, her hands clutching Varder's knees, "please forgive us Alpha, do not visit the sin of the child upon the family, please have mercy ". Ava was dumbstruck, no words seemed to be able to come out of her mouth, like the slap had made her brain turn to mush, wasn't it her mother's plan for her to hide in the bag, or was she imagining things?
Varder looked at Ava.
"The marriage will proceed," he said. "Now."
Rossana was still on her knees.
"Your Highness." Her voice was exactly what it needed to be — grateful, broken, the voice of a mother who had asked for mercy and was now receiving the verdict. "My family. Please. Whatever my daughter has done—"
"Your family will not be punished."
Rossana's eyes closed briefly. Her shoulders dropped a fraction. She bowed her head and stood up.
"Thank you," she whispered.
She watched her mother's relief with the specific clarity of someone whose mind had finally stopped looking for an alternative explanation, that her mother had come into this arena this morning knowing exactly how it would end. That the kneeling and the tears and the broken voice and the slap had all been movements in a sequence planned before Ava ever climbed into the bag.
Gamma Cole was watching his wife .
Then he looked away and his face went back to what it needed to be and he was a soldier again and she was alone again. How could this be happening to her? How could her father who had always loved her just watch and do nothing while she was being disgraced.
She was sure her father knew she was innocent but the way acted showed that he believed everyone of those lies.
Elder Tony arrived at the center of the arena floor in his ceremonial robes with the unhurried composure of a man who had been performing pack ceremonies for forty years and had developed the specific serenity of someone who understood that the circumstances of a ceremony were never his business. His business was the ceremony. He performed it regardless.
He looked at Ava.
He looked at Varder.
He opened his book.
Ava stood in her crushed dress and her fallen hair and her two slap marks and she watched the elder open his book and she felt the last door she had been holding open somewhere inside her swing shut.
There was no more waiting. No more counting breaths in the dark. No produce van. No east gate. No Aunt Margret and the life on the other side of everything.
There was only this.
She concentrated on standing straight.
Elder Tony spoke the opening words in the old language, the ceremonial phrases that Ava had heard at other weddings and had never imagined hearing at her own and certainly not like this. The words fell into the arena's silence and lay there and the arena received them with the specific stillness of five hundred people watching something that none of them had language for yet.
Varder spoke his vows first.
He said them the way he said everything — level, certain, without hesitation, each word placed with the flat deliberate calm of a man who had decided something and was executing the decision. "I promise to love and cherish you as long as we both shall live... His eyes stayed on her face throughout.
Then Elder Tony. turned to her.
"Ava of the Cole family," he said. His voice was not unkind. "Your vows."
She looked at the elder's book.
She thought about Simon turning and walking away.
She looked up at Varder.
Her voice came out shaking. She could not stop that. She had stopped the tears and she had kept her spine straight through all of it but she could not stop the shaking in her voice when she opened her mouth and began to speak the words that would close the last door. "I promise to love and honour you as long as i shall live...".
When she finished, Elder Tony closed his book.
"By the power vested in me,I now pronounce you husband and wife, you may now kiss the bride," he said simply.
Varder closed the distance between them, wrapping his hand around ava's waist posessively, pressed his lips to hers and thrust his tongue forcefully inside her mouth, making the kiss so intense that by the time he pulled back, she was out of breath.
The entire arena exploded in applause and cheers, like everything was normal, while Ava mind was still reeling from everything that had happened and everything that would happen.