~LYRA'S POV~
The ceremony had been delayed three times.
First by the battle itself, which had a way of making formal rituals feel irrelevant when the ground was still settling from everything that had happened on it. Then by Kael's death and the mourning period that followed, which had required the appropriate deference, you didn't hold a celebration while a pack was still processing a loss of that scale. Then by the unification politics, which had a way of absorbing every available moment and making things that were supposed to be straightforward into things with seventeen prerequisite conversations.
But the morning had finally arrived, and someone had spent a truly unreasonable amount of effort on a silver dress, and I was standing in front of a mirror in Silverclaw's formal preparation room trying to decide if I was ready.
