“What’s that have to do with a ceremony?”
“You don’t need the ceremony if you have that much history. And we had a great party. Everyone in the household dressed up—even Uncle Qhuinn had on a tuxedo. My parents came, and he and I danced to ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ ’ in the foyer.”
“Journey.”
“You know the song?”
“Uncle Zsadist sings it the best.”
“I agree with you on that. And as for the back carving and everything, we’ve always meant to do that.”
But since that night when potential had turned into actual, when happily-never-after had lost its “n,” a lot of shit had happened. They had the twins now, and young were some next-level overwhelm, capable of layering a whole new level of exhaustion on top of fighting to protect the vampire species and living a regular life. Still, he wouldn’t change a thing, and Rhamp and Lyric were starting to show their personalities, which was exciting: Rhamp was fierce as his sire, meeting you right in the eye even as you cradled him in his blanket—despite the fact that the full extent of the kid’s fighting arsenal was explosive diarrhea. Which, okay, fine, could clear a room faster than a flash-bang. Lyric, on the other hand, was a watcher, and much more reserved than her brother. But when she smiled? She was the sun.
“Being mated officially doesn’t affect who we are to each other,” Blay said.
Bitty smiled. “Oh, I know that. Your eyes change color when you look at him.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. They get deeper blue. Plus you blush a lot. Why do you blush like that? Is it something he does?”
Clearing his throat, Blay ruffled through the pages of the magazine, watching the line drawings flap by in the midst of their frames of text. He stopped on one that depicted a fish on a bicycle.
“Well, ah,” he said. “Um, I don’t really think I blush—”
“And Uncle Qhuinn smiles when he’s with you. He doesn’t smile much anywhere else.”
Blay frowned. “Oh, sure he does. He’s really happy. He’s got me and the twins, and Layla and Xcor, who are excellent co-parents with us. Plus he’s a member of the Brotherhood.”
“I guess he’s just happier with you.” Bitty shrugged. “Okay, I’m going to put ‘wedding cake’ down on my sample list.”
“What else you got on there?”
“Fourth of July cake. Fruit cake. Bundt cake. Pineapple upside-down cake—”
“What’s Fourth of July cake?”
“It’s a red, white, and blue cake. Then there’s funfetti, red velvet, Black Forest, pavlova, Yule log—”
“Wait, so are you researching holidays and celebrations? Or cakes.”
“Both.”
He thought of Rhage’s famous appetite. “Is your dad on this committee?”
“How did you know?”
With a wave, the girl strode off with her list, and Blay intended to return to the article he’d been reading. Too bad his eyes refused to get with the back-andforth program. He just kept staring at that fish with its bicycle. The rainbow trout was anthropomorphized, dressed in a suit and pedaling with his back fins, the basket in front filled with what looked like groceries.
None of the drawing made any sense. Not the clothes, not the food, not the breathing without water. Then again, it was just a cartoon, free to be some kind of metaphor, the point of the pen-and-ink artistry unclear to Blay at the moment.
Maybe it was merely a whimsical sketch, like a vase of flowers for the eye in the midst of an article about something serious.
He checked his watch. A little after ten p.m.
The night seemed long as a lifetime, and he couldn’t wait for Qhuinn to get back from his shift on rotation. The pair of them were allowed to be in the field together, but they were never paired up, and sometimes, like this evening, one of them was off while the other was working. It was fine. There were always the daylight hours.
Blay smiled as he thought of the bed they shared.
And what they did in it.
Okay, fine, no wonder he blushed so much around his mate. But that was nothing Bitty ever needed to worry about.
Forcing his eyes to get going with the busywork of tracking letters, words and sentences, he had to push aside a lingering distraction. The sense that something was off-kilter in the universe, some kind of calamity due to arrive at any minute, was the worst company a guy could have.
Especially when the male you loved more than anybody else in the world was out in the cold in the field.
Blay let his head fall back again. The ceiling was about thirty feet up, and it had old beams that were varnished the same tone as all the mahogany wood of the shelves, the hearth mantel, the floor. Whenever he retreated to this room, he always thought that this must be what the inside of a jewelry box was like, the glow of gold from all the spines of the ancient tomes like an extension of the crackling fire, the sense of protection and being among that which was rare making him feel kind of special himself.
He looked to the archway. Voices of doggen and Brothers and fighters wove together, some louder than others depending on whether they were next door in the billiards room, coming down from the grand staircase, or out in the dining room.
The mansion was never truly quiet.
And on a night like tonight, when he was on edge for no good reason . . .
It was such a reassurance to know that he was not alone.
As Elle landed facedown in the snow, she flipped onto her back and braced herself for a knife, a gun, a fist—whatever came at her. Mostly, the defensive response was because she wanted to fight for her life, but she was also a coward because she couldn’t watch Terrie’s face while she got murdered. She already knew her sister was screaming in the driver’s seat. She could hear it. And the fact that this was Elle’s fault, all of it, from the drive, to the wrong exit, to the bad turn, to the snowbank, was—
“Relax, kid.”
The voice above her was grave and very deep, the kind of thing a radio-show host would use when making a public service announcement. It was also slightly bored, as if sniveling, panicked teenage girls and their bigmouthed sisters hadn’t been on the man’s list of things to do tonight.
Elle paused with her flailing on the snowpack. “What?”
“You can stop freaking out, okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The guy was absolutely enormous as he loomed over her, and she had a feeling he wasn’t just a tow truck guy. After all, his leather jacket was open, and there was something strapped, handles down, to his huge chest. Knives? And what else from Fortnite could be under there? Add those piercings and the laser-eye routine, and she was pretty sure that he was speaking in a foreign language and she’d translated “I’m going to fuck you up” incorrectly.
When he extended his arm, she shrank back and covered her face with her hands. When nothing happened and nothing hurt, she peeked out from between the picket fence of her fingers. The man was leaning over her . . . with an extended open palm. That had nothing sharp and shiny in it.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated.
Elle glanced back at her dad’s car. Terrie had both of her hands covering her mouth like she was worried that saying anything, even inside the car, might spook the big man into disastrous action.