Page 128 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

The man's mouth twists like he's been waiting all morning for the invitation.

"Gladly." He turns — not toward Marshall this time, but toward the three men against the wall, pitching his voice louder so it carries through the whole cramped room. "These three are known the length and breadth of this town. Everyone knows the story. They left this Omega—" a curt nod in my direction, like I'm Exhibit A and not a woman holding a pen "—standing at the altar. Abandoned her. Five years ago, in front of the entirety of Honeybell Harbor. No explanation offered. None whatsoever. And now?" He spreads his hands wide, performing for the cheap seats. "Now they come waltzing in here, expecting me to stamp a form swearing they've suddenly, conveniently rediscovered their love? Please. Who, precisely, do they imagine they're convincing?"

The words land in the little room like a tray of dropped glass.

I keep my eyes on the paperwork.

I keep my pen moving, slow and even, my signature looping across another dotted line as though the man hasn't just hauled the single worst day of my life out into the fluorescent light and laid it on the desk for everyone to examine.

Keep signing. Do not give him the flinch he's fishing for. You survived the actual altar, Amber. You can survive a small man narrating it back to you.

Marshall taps his ash and exhales, entirely unmoved.

"See, that's an awful lot of noise about a story you only know the loud half of," he says. "You've got the leaving. Congratulations. The whole town's got the leaving. What not one of you gossips ever thought to ask is what was holding a knife to their throats while they did it." He tilts his head. "But that's not your job, is it? Your job is a stamp. So how about you do the small, boring thing this office pays you for, and leave the judging to the people who were actually standing in that room."

The councilman's face goes an interesting shade of plum.

"That is not?—"

"Compatibility. That's the box you're snagged on." Marshall talks right over him, unhurried. "You want to know whether five people can hold a pack together." He gestures, lazy, at me, at the men, at Sawyer, at the whole crowded little room. "So quit lecturing and watch. Going to be the easiest certification you sign all year."

I let my gaze slide, just once, to the right.

The three of them are a study in barely-contained agony.

Beckett has his arms crossed so tightly the seams of his jacket are filing a formal complaint, his cedar-and-rain-stone scent gone sharp and thunderous with the effort of staying silent.

August has gone pale, his eyes fixed on some neutral patch of the far wall, his gentle iris-and-sage scent curdling at the edges — he looks like every syllable is a nail somebody's tapping in slow.

Cade's the worst of the three at hiding it. His jaw works, his hands flex and fist at his sides, and that spiced-rum-and-blood-orange scent of his practically crackles with the need to defend himself, to explain, to say the thing he's never once been allowed to say.

Not one of them makes a sound.

They can't.

And every one of them knows they can't.

The power in this room lives entirely inside the councilman's pinched little court, and if a single one of them snaps back, he could sink our whole certification out of nothing but spite.

So they stand in it. They take it.

They let a stranger narrate their worst mistake to a room, heads high and mouths shut, because that is the toll on the bridge to the second chance they came here to beg for.

Once —just once— Cade's weight shifts, his mouth opening on the front edge of a word, five years of held-back explanation finally clawing for the door. Beckett's hand closes around his forearm before the sound can get out. Not rough. Just steady, an anchor dropped clean.

Not here,the grip says.Don't hand the man a reason.

Cade's jaw snaps shut. He breathes out through his nose, long and unsteady, and folds himself back into stillness.

I feel those swallowed words in my own chest like a stone, and I hate —I genuinely, helplessly hate— that some starved little corner of me wanted to hear them.

There's a second thing simmering under all that fury, too — one I clocked the very second the four of us walked through the door.

They've seen my neck.

The hair I left down doesn't cover the side of my throat.

It doesn't cover the mark riding just above my collarbone, or the plain, undeniable fact that I walked into this building smelling like Sawyer Devereaux from my hairline to my heels.