41. Wilder
Wilder
Willa gasps, mouth dropping open. “What, me? No, oh no no no, I didn’t; I mean…this is some kind of mistake, surely? I thought you were kidding before!”
Oz stares up at me. “Did you know about this?”
I stroke stray dark purple hairs away from his horns, tucking them behind his ear while Willa sputters and denies what Sandoval just announced.
The gazebo’s in an uproar between folks clapping and others lobbing a volley of questions at the Sandovals and Willa.
“Let’s hear it for the new Keeper!” Emmer shouts.
“Oh my gods!” Willa’s in obvious shock, mouth open but both hands covering it. “I mean…alright, of course, alright!!”
Chaos erupts as winged monsters take flight, hooting and hollering from up near the rafters.
Willa looks around with a hand over her heart, tears streaming down her cheeks.
She’s barely holding back a smile, and it's then I know, for all her babbling and bluster, she wants this job.
It might not be the thing she expected, but she wants it anyhow.
The Gulch weaseled her way right into my sister’s heart. Seems like neither one of us was ready for what she had in store.
“She’s gonna be so damn good,” Oz murmurs. “With all that face reading and figuring out historical mysteries and whatnot. You must have found the key, right? After I…left?”
I nod as monsters throng around us, clapping us on the backs and shoulders and interrupting any response. It’s so damn loud in here I can’t hear myself think.
“Ah! So happy for you two!” Lemon comes up and throws herself in Oz’s arms, squeezing him so tight he turns a darker shade of purple.
When he puts her down, she beams at me. “Welcome to the family, officially, now that it’s out in the open and everything. I thought Furyon saving me from a train was pretty epic, but this grand gesture?” She waves her hand at her face. “This was really something.”
“Don’t know how you pulled it off,” says Bluebell as she joins us, slinging an arm around Oz and the other around Lemon, “but I’m fucking glad you did. He was so miserable at my place.”
My mouth drops open, but I zip it and scowl. “You told me you hadn’t seen him. Liar.”
She shrugs. “He just needed a safe place for a minute. And anyhow, it gave you time to put all of this together.” She slaps my biceps. “Plus, he did leave and go looking for you!”
“You did?” I squeeze Oz tighter to me.
“Yeah, I felt like such an ass,” he shouts over the din. “But I couldn’t find you.”
“Took me, Willa and the Sandovals all night to put this together and warn a bunch of folks that the bell meant to come down here. It was a whole production.”
Oz looks around me at the stage. “The Sandovals helped?”
“We did,” says Emmer as he pushes through the crowd with a big smile. “Well, Dad slept quite a bit—benefit of being the patriarch, I suppose. Wilder and I cut out so many hearts, my fingers are killing me.” He lifts his big hands, showing us fingers covered in tiny nicks and scrapes.
Oz throws a hand over his mouth, looking between us. “I can’t believe you did this for me!”
Emmer claps me on the back but never looks away from Oz.
“There’s nothing a good mate won’t do to please his better half.
Ain’t that right?” He shoots me a wry smile.
“By the way, your sister and I caught up with Saint Ashbourne this morning, and let’s just say you won’t need to worry about him today or any other day.
PG helped us toss him through the portal, and we’ve locked it against him, so he’ll never be able to come back. So just enjoy this, alright?”
“We will,” I assure him. There’s no time to say anything else, though, because we’re overrun by the pixie twins and Hadrian and Furyon. Betty comes over to say hi, and so does the bartender from the coffee shop who helped me plan that piece of it.
Eventually we manage to make our way to the stage. Enough monsters have cleared out, and Willa doesn’t have a huge line in front of her any longer.
Pulling Oz to the railing, I tuck him between my legs and wrap his tail around my fist. “You okay?”
He slides both hands up my chest to rest over my heart. “Better than okay, Wild. This was…amazing. Nobody’s ever done anything like this. I wouldn’t have taken you for the grand gesture type, if I’m honest.”
Holding him close, I stare deep into those amethyst eyes. “I may not have said it enough, but I’m obsessed with you, little mate. I’ve noticed and catalogued everything about you, and I love it all. You’re my treasure, Oz, the only one I ever need.”
Leaning in, he brushes his lips against mine.
I’m just opening to taste him when Willa shoves her way between us. “There’s time for that later, boys. We’ve gotta talk!”
Oz groans and slings an arm around her neck, half choking her. “Willa, we have got to talk about your timing.”
“Can you believe this, though?” She points at the gazebo above us.
“How beautiful she is? And there’s so much more.
What popped up in downtown is just part of it, you guys.
I’ve got so much to do. There’s not a Keeper’s office or anything.
I’ve never even met the sheriff, who’s kinda doing the job now. Like, where even is he?”
She launches into a litany of other questions while Oz and I share a look. Willa’s on a tear, which means we’re gonna get dragged on a tear too.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a huge figure slither into view at the edge of the gazebo. When I look, Kohdiy’s coiled just behind the stage, watching the departing monsters with a wary expression.
Clearing my throat, I spin Willa around and shove her in his direction. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Willa rushes to the railing and hops up onto it, slinging her legs over. “Kohdiy, you missed it. Can you believe this?”
She’s as exuberant with him as she was with us, but this is different. I can tell by the way his gaze softens when he looks at her. And from what we learned last night, Sipan’s successor needed to have the ophiotaurii clan in mind. Maybe this is the right first step to making that happen.
Not that I won’t keep my eye on him after what Oz has shared about the ophiotaurii’s criminal activity.
“Smile, you two!”
Oz spins in my arms, and a flash temporarily blinds me. Growling, I rub at my eyes and look for the source of my annoyance.
The pixie sisters stand there snapping pic after pic of us.
“You two are a damn menace,” says Oz, but he cocks his head to the side and poses anyhow.
Knowing he won’t be happy if our pictures look terrible, I force a smile through another ten or fifteen photos before growling at them to take a hike.
I don’t want to be in the town’s gossip paper. Can’t imagine anything further down my list of to-dos. But if Oz doesn’t mind, then I’ll try not to either.
He looks over his shoulder at me. “Baby, can we go home? After last night, I just need some time alone with you.”
Nuzzling his ear, I breathe in his crisp, cool scent. “Which home, sweetheart?”
“My place? For now…” He rubs his ass against my groin, pulling a soft moan from me.
“It feels so good having you back in my arms,” I whisper. “Forever, Oz. Give me forever.”
He chuckles. “You’re awfully bossy, but I suppose I can agree to that.”
We follow the remnants of the crowd out of the gazebo. The new building shoots off confetti cannons as we walk by, all the businesses’ doors swinging open in welcome. She seems as exuberant as my sister. Streamers fall from the sky as giant flowers bloom in fresh new pots in front of the building.
It’s like downtown is blossoming even more, and maybe that’s how it was always meant to be…