Chapter 23 - Selene
“Hold still,” Ava says, “or I’m going to end up sticking this pin straight into your skull, and Ronan will kill me if you end up injured again.”
“That’s true, I don’t think he could cope,” Emily chimes in, not looking up from the ribbon she’s threading. “Though I think he’d just marry her down at the clinic today if that’s where she ends up.”
“I think he might prefer that to all this fuss; he looks so stressed,” Savannah laughs, unpacking more of the bakery goodies that she brought over from the mainland this morning. I watch as Maren helps her, laughing as she has been all morning, her voice so full of happiness.
It’s a good sound, and I let myself enjoy it.
A month ago, I couldn’t even sit up without help, and now I’m fully recovered, and there’s a room full of women, half of them wolves I was terrified of a few weeks back, half of them coven I never thought I’d see again, and every one of them here on the island just for my special day.
Maren catches my eye in the mirror. “Your mother would have loved this,” she says quietly, just for me. “All of it.”
My throat goes tight. “I know,” I tell her.
“No crying.” Serena appears with a tiny brush. “We have just finished on your beautiful face, and I will not be beaten by feelings.”
Emma snorts inelegantly from the corner, where she’s supposedly guarding the flowers and actually eating all the snacks. “Give it up, Serene. There won’t be a dry eye on this whole island by sundown. You know how folk get at these things.”
Ava fixes the last pin and steps back, as everyone crowds around to look at me in the mirror, and for a second, nobody says anything at all until Emily gasps.
“He’s going to lose his mind,” she giggles.
“He lost it long ago where this girl is concerned,” Maren says.
I laugh along, but in reality, my hands have been trembling all morning.
It’s nerves and excitement, not fear. After a lifetime of being scared I would only ever be wanted for what I can do, I’m about to be mated to a man who wants me just for me.
They get me into the dress I chose just last week when Maren and some of my friends from the coven arrived. It’s simple, pale pink, cut low across the back and one shoulder, and I know instinctively that Ronan will love it. My stomach flips every time I catch sight of it in the glass.
“You’re shaking,” Emily says softly, and takes my hand.
“I’m not nervous.” I am a little. But that’s not it. “I just keep thinking about how I got to this point. I came to this pack kidnapped. And now…”
“And now you’re mating with the idiot who kidnapped you.” Ava grins, but her eyes are gentle. “Romance isn’t what it used to be.”
Savannah opens the door, and the sound of the party already starts to drift in from the street with laughter, voices, and somewhere down the hill, a band warming up.
“Second time lucky,” she laughs. “The first time didn’t count because the whole pack didn’t celebrate. This is a proper party, and it’s about to start.”
We chose the island to host our mating ceremony, combined with the winter fair everyone had been so looking forward to.
It was going to be the mainland, home ground, but Callum talked Ronan round by saying that they wanted to welcome all of us, and a celebration was just the way to do it.
The brothers have supplied all the food, and all four packs have transformed the settlement square by the harbor into a stunning winter wonderland scene—Savannah’s wildest dreams for the fair have all come true.
Lights have been strung the length of the coastal path, hundreds of them, swinging in the wind with their twinkling lights dancing on the water.
There’s a bonfire built high behind the half-finished storehouses that will be lit as soon as it falls dark.
Stalls line the square, ready for the party to follow, and the crowd parts as we walk through, and I hold my head high, trying not to give in to the emotion of the moment.
Then I see Ronan, and my eyes fill with tears of pure happiness as everything and everyone else falls away until it’s just the two of us.
Ronan sees me at the exact same time, and I watch the moment hit him as his whole face changes—a smile, one of his most genuine, that makes him look younger and even more handsome.
I walk to him, Maren at my side the whole way, her hand in mine. When we reach the small stage, she puts my hand in his and whispers something to him that I don’t catch, and whatever it is, he nods like it’s a promise.
The ceremony feels quick, or maybe I’m just not listening because I’m too busy enjoying the way Ronan is rubbing lazy circles on my wrist as we recite our vows. There aren’t many words, because everything we want to say to each other has been felt a thousand times over the last few weeks.
“I spent my whole life thinking I had to take everything I wanted,” he says, looking into my eyes.
“I thought I had to fight for it all, bleed for it, and then finally, I took you, and you…” His voice catches.
“You gave me more than I ever even knew I wanted. You saw something in me that I didn’t even know existed, something so much more worthwhile than the image of myself that I’d built. ”
“You made it very hard,” I whisper.
His mouth twitches. “I know.”
“I choose you,” I tell him, and I feel it move through the crowd, through the pack, that word, choose, because it means everything to both of us. “Because of who you are, and who we will be together. You were always worth it.”
Behind him, I see Ryder’s jaw working, and Aiden puts his hand on Ryder’s shoulder.
It’s a brotherly gesture, and it makes me so happy to see how far these men have come in only a few weeks.
It didn’t take long for them to see how similar they all are.
I see Callum put a hand on Ronan’s shoulder, brief, a brother’s hand, the kind he waited thirty years for.
Maren is crying openly now, and long past pretending.
And I watch Ronan as he takes it all in—his brothers here, the settlement on the island, a happy and secure pack standing all around him, and I watch as he leans into it, into me, and lets the past fall away.
“I know that now,” he says. “Because of you. I will spend a lifetime living up to being the man you deserve.”
He leans down and presses his mouth to mine, and the whole square erupts. Someone lights the bonfire, and the band kicks off to the sound of cheers.
The party runs long after dark, and we dance all night, the rogues, island wolves, and witches all tangled up together on the new green under the twinkling lights.
I see that Savannah got her way with the sparklers and leads the children through the stalls with them waving in the air.
Thoroughly worn out from dancing, I take a break, and someone hands me a cup of something warm and spiced, and I stand with Ava and Serena as Ronan finds me and wraps his arms around me.
Never have I felt like I belong anywhere the way I belong right here, right now.
Ryder finds us near the fire. He’s smiling, but there’s something simmering underneath it, and I know that Ronan feels it too, because his arm around me tightens.
“Please don’t give me bad news tonight,” Ronan says.
“No. Not tonight.” Ryder’s quiet for a moment, the firelight moving on his face. “But there’s a message that came in. I should have switched my phone off. It’s probably nothing, some message about calling in our debt now that we’re settled. We don’t have any debts.”
He hands Ronan the phone and tilts it so I can skim the message too.
I see Ronan’s finger hover over the delete button, but he hesitates.
I don’t really understand the message, but my eyes snag on a line about the brothers repaying her debt.
And I look at Ryder, who nods, and I know it means their mother.
But what kind of debt could she possibly have had?
Ronan hands the phone back to Ryder and shrugs. “Sounds like someone wanting a payday. Whatever it is, we’ll handle them. Definitely tomorrow’s problem, Ryder. Enjoy the party. Whoever this is can’t touch us, or our mom’s memory.”
The party goes on around us, and I’m pleased to see that Ryder does seem to enjoy himself, but eventually we slip away up the dark path to the cabin at the top of the headland that’s ours now, and the second the door shuts behind us, the noise of the party and all the people drops away to almost nothing. Just the distant sound of the sea.
The cabin is starting to feel like home, and although it’s not finished yet, I know he worked day and night to make sure it was livable before the ceremony.
He takes me by the hand toward the master suite, and we look out of the enormous picture window overlooking the harbor, and I can’t help but smile at the scene below: thousands of lights, the bonfire, and a settlement in the middle of a full-blown celebration.
Then I turn, and he’s looking at me, his wolf right there in his eyes, dark and hungry, and it sends heat curling through my belly.
“You’re staring,” I manage.
“I’ve wanted to do a lot more than stare all night,” he says, walking slowly so that I back up toward the bed until the backs of my knees hit the mattress.
His hand comes up to the bare curve of my shoulder, tracing the place where an alpha marks his mate.
“Do you have any idea what it did to me, watching you walk up that headland in this dress? Knowing you were finally mine?”
“I was always yours.” My voice isn’t steady. “You just needed to catch up.”
His mouth twitches. Then it’s on mine, and there’s nothing slow about it anymore.
He kisses me like he’s making up for every moment we denied our connection; it’s deep and claiming, and his hands find the ties of my dress, and within seconds it’s pooling at my feet.
Then he steps back and looks at me as I stand there in the low light of the moon and all the tiny lights, and the way he looks at me, like I’m the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, undoes me more than any touch could.
“Say it again,” he murmurs, his mouth dropping to my throat. “What you said in the ceremony.”
“That I choose you?” I whisper.
He kisses me, and then he lifts me, laying me back on the bed, following me down, settling his weight between my thighs.
I pull his shirt off until he laughs and has to straighten up to shrug it off so I can run my hands over the warm, hard planes of his body, the scars I bandaged recently, and the ones he’s carried for much longer.
His mouth moves down my throat, over my collarbone, and takes my nipple as I arch up off the bed with a gasp. He takes his time, sucking and grazing them with his teeth until I’m writhing under him with my fingers fisted in his hair, before he moves lower, kissing a path down my stomach.
“Ronan…” I say, but I don’t even know what I’m asking for.
“I know, baby.” His breath is hot against the inside of my thigh now. “I’ve got you.”
Then his mouth is on me, his tongue sliding through my folds, and I cry out, my hips bucking up and almost coming off the bed.
He pins me down with a forearm across my belly and licks me slow and deep, like there’s nowhere else on this whole island he’d rather be, and when he closes his lips around my clit and sucks, I nearly come apart right there.
He slides one thick finger inside me, then two, curling them, and the stretch makes me moan his name into the dark as the pressure begins to build. “That’s it,” he growls against me, his wolf running through his voice now, rough and low. “Let me hear you.”
I do. I can’t help it. He works me with his mouth and his fingers until I’m shaking, until I’m wound so tight I can’t breathe, and then I shatter, crying out, thighs clamping around his head as I come hard, feeling my juices gush over his fingers.
He doesn’t care, and he doesn’t stop, even when I beg against the sensitivity of it all. Then he’s suddenly gone, kissing his way back up my body, and I can feel how hard he is now against my hip, and I reach down and wrap my hand around his cock, enjoying the way he hisses through his teeth.
“Selene,” he chokes out, and it sounds like a warning and a plea rolled into one.
“I want you inside me.” I pull him up to me. “Now.”
He laughs at the desperation in my tone and settles between my thighs, lining himself up, and for one second, he goes completely still, forehead dropping to mine, both of us breathing hard.
“I love you,” he says. Not a confession this time, just a simple fact. The steadiest thing I’ve ever heard him say. “I should have told you so much earlier, but I was a coward. I’m not one anymore.”
“I love you too. Now stop talking and…”
He pushes into me in one slow, deep stroke, and we both groan. He fills me completely, stretching me around him, and he holds me there, buried to the hilt, letting me feel every inch of him.
“Fuck,” he breathes against my mouth. “There’s nothing like you. Nothing.”
Then he starts moving, setting a pace that’s slow and deep, and I feel the bond come alive between us. I feel his love pouring into me, and I realize that the bond magic is more of a gift than I ever thought possible.
“Feel that?” he says, his voice filled with wonder.
“Yes.” I can barely get the word out. “Goddess, Ronan…yes…”
He drives into me harder, deeper, one hand gripping my hip to hold me right where he wants me, and I meet every stroke, wrapping my legs around him and pulling him closer, needing all of him, needing there to be nothing left between us anywhere.
I’m climbing again, higher this time, and I can feel he’s close, too, his rhythm growing ragged, his wolf right at the surface.
“Come with me,” he growls. “I want to feel it. Come on, baby…”
I break apart around him, my whole body clenching down, and I hear him swear, driving deep and holding there as he follows me over, spilling into me.
And in that moment, as we come apart together, he drops his mouth to the bare curve of my shoulder, and he marks me.
His canines sink into the soft skin, and while it should hurt and perhaps does a little, the magic blooms into something else entirely, as I feel the love that will sustain us a lifetime snap into place.
I feel him. All of him. The lonely boy in the cold cabin, the alpha ready to fight a war, and the man buried inside me now, all true.
And I feel myself, in him—I feel the exact moment he understands I’m not going anywhere, not ever, and that this is real.
I feel the fear go out of him. Thirty years of it, gone and replaced by certainty.
He holds me, and I suddenly see it all. Our future. The children, the laughter, the cabin finished beautifully, the friends, and all the winter fairs to come.
“I’m so glad this is our home, Ronan,” I whisper.
And he smiles against my skin, the real smile, the one hardly anyone ever gets to see, and pulls me in closer, and outside the window, the island continues to celebrate.
Tonight, we really are home.
*****
THE END