HER ARRANGED MARRIAGE

CHAPTER 002

The Weight of a Name

CECILIA

My father's study always felt smaller than it actually was.

It was not a small room. It had high ceilings, wide shelves lined with books and old pack records, a desk that had been in our family for three generations.

But whenever I walked into it for a serious conversation, the walls always seemed to close in a little.

I shut the door behind me and stood across from his desk.

Bonn did not look up immediately. He was reading something, or pretending to. I waited, because I knew this man and I knew his silences.

This one was deliberate. He was gathering himself before he spoke, which meant whatever was coming was something he had already prepared for.

He finally set the paper down and looked at me.

"Sit."

"I am fine standing."

He held my gaze for a moment, then let it go. "The pack is talking, Cecilia."

"The pack is always talking."

"Not like this." He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on the desk. "The elders called a meeting two days ago without me. Do you know what that means?"

I did. It meant things had moved past whispers and into something more formal.

"They are questioning whether an unmated Alpha's daughter can be trusted to lead," he continued. "Whether the pack's future is secure if the person meant to inherit has no mate, no stability, no—"

"I have stability," I cut in, keeping my voice even. "I train with the warriors every morning. I handle border disputes. I sit in every council meeting you allow me into. My stability is not the question here."

"It is to them."

I looked at him. "And to you?"

He did not answer straight away. He turned his head slightly, his eyes moving to the window.

Outside, I could hear the distant sounds of the pack going about its day. Normal ordinary sounds.

His silence was its own answer.

Something tightened in my chest, but I did not let it show.

"I am not going to mate someone just to quiet gossip," I said. "That is not a good enough reason."

"Cecilia—"

"It is not." I kept my tone steady. "You taught me to be careful about who I let close. You taught me that trust is earned. Now you want me to hand myself to a stranger because a few elders are restless?"

Bonn finally looked back at me, and his expression was tired in a way that went beyond the conversation. "It is not a few elders anymore. Pack members are starting to speak openly. Some of them are saying—" He stopped and pressed his lips together briefly. "Some of them are saying you are cursed. That the moon goddess has turned her back on you."

The words hit differently than I expected them to. Not because I had not heard them before, but because hearing my father repeat them, sitting behind his desk in his formal voice, made them feel more real than they had any right to.

I said nothing.

"I need you to take this seriously," he said quietly.

"I do take it seriously. I just refuse to solve it by making a decision I cannot undo."

He exhaled and I walked out.

****

Darcy was leaning against the wall directly outside the door. Of course she was.

She took one look at my face and straightened. "How bad?"

"He repeated the curse rumour to my face."

She winced. "So bad then."

I started walking and she fell into step beside me without being asked.

That was the thing about Darcy. She never needed to be asked. She simply knew when to follow and when to give space, and she had spent enough years beside me to read the difference without being told.

"The elders held a meeting without him," I said, keeping my voice low as we moved through the corridor. "They are questioning my fitness to lead."

Darcy was quiet for a moment. "I had heard something about that. I did not want to say anything until I was sure."

I glanced at her. "You should have told me."

"I know. I am sorry." She meant it. "But Cecilia, the rumours really have been getting louder lately. It is not just idle talk in corners anymore. People are saying it openly now, in the market, at the pack hall. I heard two women at the healer's yesterday saying your wolf is broken and that no man would want to take on a wolfless mate."

I stopped walking.

Darcy stopped beside me.

I stared at the wall ahead of me for a moment, not really seeing it. I was thinking about Lavender. About the silence I reached into every single day and found nothing waiting there. About the fact that I could not even argue with what people were saying because I did not have a good enough answer for it myself.

"I am not mating a stranger to make people comfortable," I said finally.

"I know."

"I mean it, Darcy."

"I know you do." Her voice was gentle. "I am not arguing with you. I am just telling you what I heard so you are not walking into things blind."

I nodded once and kept walking.

She did not follow this time. She knew I needed the rest of the walk alone.

Three days passed.

I kept to my routine because routine was the only thing that made sense when everything else felt like it was slowly shifting beneath my feet.

Training in the mornings. Pack duties in the afternoons. And having meals I barely tasted. Sleep that came later than it should have.

On the fourth morning, a packhouse servant found me after training with a short message.

My father wanted to see me again.

I knew before I even opened the door that this was different.

I could not have explained how. When I walked into the study and saw my father already seated, already still, already watching the door like he had been waiting for some time, I knew.

This was not the same conversation as before.

I sat down this time.

Bonn looked at me for a moment before he spoke. "The pack's debt is worse than I have let on publicly."

I kept my expression neutral. "How much worse?"

"Significantly." He opened a ledger on the desk and turned it toward me.

I looked at the numbers and said nothing, but my stomach dropped quietly.

I had known we were struggling. I had not known it had reached this point.

"We have been managing it for two years," he continued. "But we are running out of ways to manage it. If something does not change within the next several months, we will start losing things."

I leaned back slowly. "What are you proposing?"

"A partnership. A real one, with a pack strong enough to pull us level." He paused. "I have been in discussions. There is an Alpha who is willing."

Something told me to brace myself.

"Alpha Cassian," he said. "Of the Redwood Pack."

The room went very quiet.

I do not know how long I sat there without speaking. It could not have been more than a few seconds, but it felt longer.

Every thought I had arrived at once and then scattered, and underneath all of it, beneath the shock and the fury that was already building, something else moved.

Lavender.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt her. Not clearly. Not fully. Even she could not stay silent for this.

I looked at my father. "No."

"Cecilia—"

"No." I said it again, without any room for negotiation. "Of every pack and Alpha in every territory available to you, you chose that one."

"I chose the one that can help us."

"They killed my mother." My voice did not shake. I was proud of that. "You were in a land dispute with their Alpha right before the rogues came. I have never believed that was a coincidence and neither should you."

"We do not have proof of that."

"I do not need proof to know what I know."

Bonn's jaw tightened. "This is not about what happened years ago. This is about what happens to this pack in the next six months if we do nothing."

"Then let me do something." I leaned forward. "Trade routes. We open new ones with the Ashford Pack and the Merin territory. We increase production on the southern farmlands. We renegotiate the eastern border agreement and free up resources we have been sitting on for three years. I have thought about this, Father. I have actual proposals."

I laid it out. All of it. Every idea I had been turning over in my head for months, waiting for a moment when he might actually listen.

He listened.

And then he shook his head.

"It is not enough," he said quietly. "Not fast enough and not enough. I have already considered these options."

"Then consider them harder—"

"Cecilia." His voice dropped. "If you refuse this arrangement, I will have no choice but to give the Alpha position to someone who will not."

He held my gaze.

"I will give it to your cousin, Lila."