POV: Nova
The lights came back on all at once, and someone screamed.
Not in terror in delight. A noblewoman near the center of the ballroom pointed upward, laughing, her face tipped toward the ceiling where the thousand glass globes had stopped flickering and now burned steady and brilliant and silver, a shade they hadn't been before, cold and bright as the full moon itself. The whole room had shifted color in the span of a breath. The warm gold of the festival had become something older. Something lunar. Something that made every wolf in the room lift their chin instinctively and breathe deeper.
The Mate Recognition Dance.
