Chapter 26 #2
The party takes about four minutes to break loose. Plates come out, then more plates. Children swarm the table with the pastries and are chased off twice. The music turns, and my feet pick up the beat before I’ve decided to let them.
Rachel finds me by the second table with her toddler on her hip and both older kids already gone into the crowd.
“Jessa.” She hands the baby off to a passing neighbor and hugs me hard enough to bruise. “Look at you.”
“You look well.” I pull back to see her properly. She’s put on weight in her face, and it suits her.
“They made me second line manager on Monday.” She says it with her chin up. “Four floors under you, and the whole ticketing system is mine.”
“You should have had it in the spring.”
“Danny asks every few weeks about Jared.” Rachel picks at the seam of her sleeve. “I’ve told him his father got tangled up with bad men over money and he won’t be coming back.”
I smile at her. When Jared kidnapped Mia, I had been shocked and terrified. But to know that it was the hunters who were paying him to do so infuriated me. I’m not sad he’s dead. Maybe if he hadn’t gotten greedy and asked Kylan for more money, he would still be breathing.
But life works in strange ways.
Rachel puts a hand on my arm. “Marcus’s family has strange rituals. I’m so glad you invited me. It’s like being part of another culture.”
I hide my laugh. Marcus’s pack has been warned that there is a human among them so they won’t do anything to give away their identities. This way I got to have my friend here.
I see Marcus talking to somebody and walk over. The man looks grim, and as he walks away, wiping his eyes, I ask, “What was that?”
Marcus sighs. “We’ve destroyed Uncle Nathaniel’s wolfsbane fields, but the damage he’s done is too much.
That was the parent of one of the teenagers we found.
My uncle was using the hunters to send a message to his business rival.
The father came to thank me for getting justice for his son.
His alpha asked me to let him attend the wedding so he could meet me. ”
I take his hand in mine. “He must be at peace now.”
Marcus nods.
“Dad!” Mia and Bella rush forward. “Dance with us!”
I let the girls steal Marcus away, and as I watch them dance together, I can’t help but laugh. Then Mia is whisked away by Cole, and Bella is left.
Both her feet land on Marcus’s the entire time, and he adjusts around her without once letting her notice. Whatever he says makes her tip her head back to look at him.
I’m near enough to catch her answer. “Do you actually mean that?”
“More than anything I’ve said tonight.” He crouches down to her level in the middle of the floor. “You were the first reason I ever tried to be better than I was, Bell. You’ll always be the first.”
Bella throws both arms around his neck and buries her face in his collar. Marcus holds her there while people dance around them. Mia comes rushing back, and Marcus bows to Mia, one arm across his middle, bending low enough that his hair swings loose. “Would my other daughter honor me with a dance?”
Mia goes crimson. The word still makes her shy in public. She nods anyway, and he spins her until she’s laughing so hard she has to hang off his forearm to stay upright.
“Do I have to do alpha things?” I hear her demand breathlessly. “When I’m big?”
“Not tonight.” He turns her again. “Tonight you dance, you eat cake, and you make certain Bella doesn’t get the rest of that frosting.”
“She already ate the whole bowl.”
Marcus looks over. Bella freezes with frosting on her chin and a spoon behind her back. “I didn’t do that,” she says.
He comes to me after that. The music has gone slow, the lanterns burning low over the tables, the girls collapsed in a heap of skirts near Rachel. Marcus stops in front of me and holds out his hand without a word.
“I’m tired,” I tell him.
“That works. Then you can lean on me.”
“That’s a terrible argument.”
“I’m alpha.” He takes my hand anyway. “All my arguments are excellent.”
I roll my eyes at him and go. He pulls me in against his chest, one hand splayed low on my back, and I stop holding myself up. I put my cheek over his heart. Under my ear it goes steadily while under my ribs the bond answers it. For once in my life, I’m not tracking the exits.
“Are you happy?” he asks close to my ear.
“Yes, I am.” The speed of my own answer surprises me.
“So am I.” His arm tightens. “More than I thought I’d get to be.”
“That’s because you got your way.”
“I did.” He says it straight into my hair. “I’ve got you and two lovely girls. I’m going to be smug about it for years.”
He presses his mouth to my temple. I look past his shoulder while we turn.
Zaheela is at the end of a table with four children packed in around her.
Adrian has Cole in a headlock. Rachel is dancing with her son standing on her shoes.
My daughter is asleep sitting up with her head on Bella’s shoulder, and Bella is losing the same fight.
Marcus draws me closer. “I love you,” he murmurs.
I tilt my head back. “What, you’re not going to hold out until you make me say it?”
“No, I’m not.” He shakes his head. “I already know you love me.”
“You’re extremely arrogant, considering you begged.”
“I’d beg again tomorrow.” His mouth curves. “It worked.”
My chest loosens all at once, and I rest my hand over his heart, where that second rhythm is still running under my palm. “I love you too.”
I’ve never seen his face do what it does then. His eyes go bright, and he has to swallow twice before he can move. Then he lowers his head and kisses me slowly while the fiddle plays on over our daughters asleep in a heap on the grass twenty feet away.
I close my eyes and hold on to him.