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Sept. 27, 2026

Wrong Number Pt 1: The Mate Bond Fired on the Wedding Planner (Fated Mates, Werewolf Romance)

Wrong Number Pt 1: The Mate Bond Fired on the Wedding Planner (Fated Mates, Werewolf Romance)

Fated mates. Werewolf pack. Human heroine. Forced proximity. Slow burn. Sadie plans weddings for a living and believes in exactly none of them, which makes her the ideal person to stage the Thorne ceremony: three hundred guests, an estate with no...

Fated mates. Werewolf pack. Human heroine. Forced proximity. Slow burn.

Sadie plans weddings for a living and believes in exactly none of them, which makes her the ideal person to stage the Thorne ceremony: three hundred guests, an estate with no cell service, a florist who works only in wolfsbane, and a bride and groom she has never met. She delivers the most beautiful work of her career. Then the officiant says words that were not in the approved script, something enormous moves through the clearing looking for a place to land, and it lands on the woman at the back holding the clipboard.

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Hello and welcome to Romance Weekly. This series is titled

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Wrong Number. Episode 1, The Misfire. I have planned 216 weddings,

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and I believe in exactly none of them. That is

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not bitterness. That is expertise. When you are the person

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who books the dove wrangler, times the spontaneous first-look tears

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to the golden hour, and keeps the emergency sewing kit

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and the emergency Xanax in the same monogrammed bag, you

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stop believing in destiny the way a magician stops believing

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in magic. I make the magic. I know where the

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wires run. Two hundred and sixteen couples have gazed into

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each other's eyes at an altar I dressed and told

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the crowd, the universe brought them together, and I have

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stood just off camera thinking, no, a woman named Brittany

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brought you together at a kickball league, and I brought

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the peonies, and the universe had the night off. So

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when the Thorne wedding came across my desk with a

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budget that made my business partner Cass make a noise

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I had previously only heard from a kettle, I did

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what I always do. I did not believe in it,

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and I planned it flawlessly anyway. That is the job.

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Faith is optional. Logistics are not. The thorns were old money,

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the kind of old that predates the money, out on

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a wooded estate two hours north where the trees have

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opinions and the cell service does not exist. Enormous family.

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Unusually good bone structure across the board. which I noted

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the way you note weather, professionally and without feeling. They

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wanted a small ceremony, which at their income meant 300 people,

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and they wanted it at the exact minute of moonrise,

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which they were very specific about, which I filed under

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rich people astrology and moved on. The groom was named Cal,

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the bride was named Odette. I had met neither of them,

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because I had dealt entirely with the mother, Lenora, a

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silver-haired woman who ran our planning meetings, the way a

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general runs a war she has already won. I should

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have known something was off. In my defence, everything about

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rich weddings is off, so a little extra off does

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not register. The vendors they insisted on were strange. No photographer,

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which never happens. and a florist who only worked in

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wolfsbane and moonflower, which I assumed was a theme. The

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rehearsal dinner menu was, and I am quoting the card,

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very rare. The officiant was a hundred and nine years old,

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and referred to the ceremony, twice, as the joining. And once,

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when he thought I could not hear, as the hunt,

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I wrote it all down in my binder under the

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heading quirks, and I kept my mouth shut, because a

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planner who flinches at quirks does not stay booked. Cass,

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who runs the business with me and handles all the

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parts I am too impatient for, went through the same

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file and reached a different conclusion. These people, she said,

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tapping the vendor list, are in a cult. They're just rich,

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I said. Rich and a cult are the same Venn diagram,

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she said. It's a circle. She was closer than either

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of us knew. But the deposit had cleared, and the

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deposit was the kind of number that ends arguments, and

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a cleared deposit of that size buys an enormous amount

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of not my business. I have planned a wedding where

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the couple exchanged live scorpions. I have planned a ceremony

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on a glacier where the officiant had to be helicoptered.

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I do not ask why. I ask when, and how many,

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and who is paying. And the thorns had crisp, immediate

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answers to all three, which is more than most brides

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can manage about the colour of a napkin. The day

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itself was, until the exact moment it was not, the

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best work I have ever done. The light through the

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trees at moonrise was frankly obscene, gold going to silver.

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The moonflowers had opened on cue, which flowers do not

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do on cue, but I was not going to argue

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with a floral miracle on the one day I needed one.

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Three hundred beautiful guests in grey and silver, Cal at

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the altar in a suit that fit him the way

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suits fit men in the kind of movie you do

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not admit you have watched four times. I got my

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first real look at the groom and thought, with total

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professional detachment, that Odette was a lucky woman. And then

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I thought about my checklist, because I am not paid

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to think about grooms. Odette came down the aisle. The

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old officiant raised his hands. He said words that were

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not in the script I had approved. words in a

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language I did not know, older than money, and the

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whole clearing went silent, 300 people holding one breath, and

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the air changed. You know the pressure drop before a storm,

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the way your ears go strange, that, but as if

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the sky itself had leaned down to look. The officiant

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said a final word, and reached toward the couple, and

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something invisible and enormous moved through the clearing looking for

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a place to land. It landed on me. I was

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standing at the back with my clipboard. Heat bloomed up

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my arm like I had touched a stove. Except it

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did not hurt. It just arrived. A warmth that went

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straight up my arm and into my chest and unlocked

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something there with an almost audible click. A warmth with

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a direction to it. A warmth that was pointing. My

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heart did a single hard skip. That was all I felt.

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A flush and a skipped beat. the kind of thing

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you would blame on skipping lunch, which I had. The

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wolves felt something else entirely. I know that now. In

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the moment, all I knew was that 300 beautiful people

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turned their heads to look at me in perfect, horrified unison,

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like a field of deer, and that at the altar,

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the groom, Cal, a very large man who had been

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standing perfectly still, staggered sideways, as if someone had hit

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him in the sternum with a beam, caught himself on

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the arch I had built, and looked down the length

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of the aisle directly at me, with an expression I

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can only describe as a man watching his entire life

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get rewritten in real time. Oh no, said Odette, at

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the altar, in the tone of a woman who has

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just realised the caterer touched something she was allergic to,

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not heartbroken, relieved. I clocked it even then, file it away,

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It matters later. For a few long seconds, nobody moved.

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And I did the thing I do, which is triage.

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300 guests. One visibly rewritten groom. One relieved bride. One

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ancient officiant who had sat down hard on the steps

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of my arch with his hand over his mouth. My

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professional read of the room was that a load-bearing something

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had just failed. And my job, as ever, was to

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keep the event from noticing. So I raised my voice.

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the one that carries over a live band, and I

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said the most reasonable sentence available to me. What, I said,

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into the silence, with the clipboard, did the florist do?

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Because obviously it was the florist. Wolfsbane. Something in the wolfsbane.

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That was my working theory for a full 90 seconds,

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which is how long it took Lenora Thorne to cross

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the entire clearing, take my elbow in a grip like

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a bank vault closing, and say, very low, Very calm.

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You need to come with me before someone does something

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we all regret. I have a timeline, I said. Not anymore,

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she said. Here is what I learned in the study

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of a house I had only ever seen the catering

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kitchen of, while 300 guests were quietly, grimly, sent home

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from a wedding that did not happen. The Thorns are werewolves,

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The whole pack. The whole guest list. The groom. The bride.

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The 109-year-old officiant. The florist. My primary point of contact

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for six months of budget meetings. Werewolves, who mate not

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by marrying, but by a bond, an actual force that

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the ceremony was designed to lock between Cal and Odette

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to unite two pack lines, a bond that is supposed

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to be infallible, instant, permanent, the universe pointing at two people,

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and saying that one, those two, forever. It had pointed

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at the wedding planner. That's not possible, Lenora said, which

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I found rich coming from a woman who had just

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confirmed she turns into a wolf. The bond does not misfire.

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In 400 years of records, it has never once landed

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on a human. You have no magic. You have no

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scent line. You are a... And she paused to find

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a word that would not get her sued. A vendor.

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A vendor. I prefer event architect, I said, because when

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I am terrified I get professional. This is not a joke,

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Lenora said. Everything is a joke when the alternative is screaming,

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I said. I screamed exactly once at work, at a

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swan that bit a state senator. and I promised myself

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never again. She stared at me the way I imagine

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a wolf stares at a raccoon that has walked into

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its den and started rearranging the furniture. Werewolves, I would

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learn over the coming month, do not always know what

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to do with a woman who metabolises catastrophe through customer service.

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It is one of my very few advantages over them.

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She explained it anyway, because someone had to, and I

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got the entire crash course in a language of packs

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and lines and bonds while a 109-year-old man paced outside

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the door muttering that he had never seen the like.

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The short version, a mating bond is not a metaphor.

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It is a physical thing, a tether, and it is

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supposed to lock between two chosen wolves. and hold for life,

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and it had, in the entire recorded history of the

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thorn line, never once reached past the species, let alone

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landed on a woman whose only supernatural quality was an

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unnatural calm about seating charts. There has to be a

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reason it chose you, Lenora said, studying me like a

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spreadsheet that would not balance. There isn't, I said. That's

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my whole brand. I'm the person things happen around, not to.

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I hold the clipboard. The clipboard does not get married.

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Cal stood by the window the whole time and said

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almost nothing. This was not the brooding, possessive, centuries-old alpha

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the situation seemed to call for. This was a large,

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visibly mortified man who kept starting to apologise and stopping,

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who could not quite look at me and could not

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quite stop, who finally crossed the room and said, carefully,

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like a man diffusing something. I am so sorry. I

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don't know how this happened. I want you to know

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that whatever this is, you are not trapped in it.

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We will fix it. And he put out his hand

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to shake mine, an absurd gesture, deeply human, and I

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shook it because I did not know what else to do.

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And his hand was warm and enormous and calloused, and

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when it closed around mine I felt, God help me.

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Absolutely nothing supernatural at all. No magic, no pull, no bond,

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singing down the line. Just a completely ordinary, entirely mortal flutter,

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low in my stomach, the kind any woman might feel,

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shaking hands with a man who looks like that. I

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let go fast. There's a process, Lenora was saying. The bond, unclaimed,

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has to be severed. Cleanly, at the next full moon,

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28 days from tonight, and the law requires a claiming

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period first. The two of you have to cohabit until then,

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so the severance takes without tearing. Cohabit, I said. Here,

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she said. Starting tonight. So that is the story of

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how I, a woman who does not believe in fate,

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who stages other people's forever for a living, and goes

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home alone to a very organised apartment... They ended up

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dragging a wheeled suitcase up the steps of a werewolf

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manor at midnight, 28 days on the clock, to spend

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a month living with the man the universe supposedly picked

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for me, so that I could help plan the ceremony

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that would unpick him. The wedding planner, planning her own unwedding.

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The universe, it turns out, has a sense of humour.

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I was going to need one too.