22. A Crown of Cypress
The porch swing creaked.
It had creaked the same way every time I’d sat on it in the last week, and tonight I’d given up trying to make it stop.
I was lying across Callum’s lap with his arm draped just below my boobs, his thumb occasionally brushing the underside.
The swing rocked just enough to create a welcome breeze, and the creak was honestly kind of nice.
Like a sound for the porch. Like a sound for being held.
We’d just finished dinner. Rowena had cooked a spread big enough to feed an army — goopy chicken, hot water cornbread, and turnip greens full of pork belly — the kind you only find in the south.
I’d actually managed almost a full plate.
Which was a win I was scared to celebrate, considering I had considerable trouble keeping down any food the first few days back.
The kitchen was dark behind us now. The dishes were done.
Everybody had drifted out to the back porch the way people drift toward water on a hot day, without anybody deciding to do it.
The cypress and magnolias at the far line of the preserve were a darkening hedge against a sky that had finally cleared into something close to twilight.
The bond was quiet, peaceful. All three threads becoming as natural a sensation as the air that moved through my lungs.
I let my head fall against Callum’s massive thigh.
He moved his hand to the side of my neck, caressing that spot behind my earlobe that made me want to forget I had any injuries. The dark thread of our bond hummed once and went back to quiet.
It would have been easy to keep my eyes closed and drift. My body had other ideas.
Three days ago, I couldn't keep down toast. Tonight, with Callum's thumb tracing the soft skin behind my earlobe and the dark thread warm in my chest, something older than exhaustion stirred low in my belly.
I was healing. I knew it from the ache fading to a dull pull.
I knew it from this too—the simple animal fact of wanting, returned to me like a tide.
Callum knew it the moment I did. I don't know if it was the bond or his nose that clued him in first. His thumb stilled, then resumed its slow path, and a deep, bassy sound rumbled in his chest. Along the gold thread and the silver, the same awareness flared and softened.
Not tonight. Not with a cracked rib and their mother ten feet away. But soon. And soon was a promise all four of us were content to hold.
Jasper was on the porch steps with his back against the column and a beer in his hand he didn’t seem to be drinking.
Eli had taken the rocker, but he wasn’t rocking it.
Rowena was at the railing with her arms crossed and one shoulder against the post, looking out at the pasture like she was waiting for something or someone to come over the rise.
She’d been quiet at dinner.
She was quieter now.
Eli set his glass of water on the porch board, and cleared his throat.
“Mom.”
“Yes, baby.”
“What are you not saying?”
Rowena didn’t turn. She let out a breath.
“C’mon, Mom. Don’t leave us hanging.” Jasper flashed one of his infamous grins at Rowena, and my heart flipped in my chest.
“Actually, it’s you guys that should be talking.” Rowena said.
Callum’s thumb stopped teasing my lobe.
Eli looked at me before he started talking. He had that look he gets when he’s about to do the thing nobody else in the room wants.
“The mating bite.”
I knew this conversation was coming. I’d known for a week. There’s still something about hearing somebody else say it out loud that makes your stomach do a small unpleasant thing.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’re human, well, mostly.”
Rowena’s eyes went to me and stayed there.
“Yes,” I said.
“A mating bite delivers venom. It’s how the bond completes.
For wolves, the venom of a mating bite can be…
pleasant. The bond locks. We’ve got an entire worldview, culture, and laws built on that one sacred fact.
The problem is humans rarely survive the bite, let alone the transition it can trigger.
That is how a crown of cypress came to be a thing. ”
“A Louisiana thing.” Rowena clarified. “In most parts of the old and new world, it's a crown of spruce.”
“Regardless, it is cause for celebration in our world.”
“If the mating bond is the most sacred of all bonds, why is the mating bite such a risk?”
“There are many theories, the most common one being that it wasn’t a true mating bite. Of course, purists believe that no interspecies union can truly be a blessed, fated union.” Eli answered.
“And I wouldn’t put interference past those kinds of assholes.” Jasper said.
“That would be a monumental risk.” Rowena made eye contact with Jasper.
“Because the sentence for interfering with a mating bond is death.” Serena whispered.
“Correct,” Eli confirmed.
“Of course, you aren’t fully human, so that’s a bonus here.” Eli said. “But that also introduces an additional problem. A bigger one.”
“Eli,” Jasper said.
“Can we mate with her or not?” Callum’s response to the conversation made me smile, despite the seriousness. No bullshit, cut to the chase.
“Universal supernatural law. The law of everything mystic that walks this earth. Wolves. Witches. Fae. Vampires. Every kind that is not strictly human and not strictly demon. None of us are allowed to mix with the demon-blooded. None of us are allowed to breed with them. Penalty is death.”
The porch went very quiet.
Jasper set his beer down on the porch step.
“For all of us. Serena. The three of us. Mama. Dex. Celie. Anyone who lifts a finger to protect us. Anybody who hides us.”
“Are you saying I’m demon-blooded?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what he’s saying.” Jasper stood up.
“Well, I’ve never pretended to be an angel.” I thought it was funny. No one else did. “But Fate can’t be wrong, can it? I am your mate. This bond is real. And the mating bond is the most sacred of laws amongst the wolves. Eli taught me that. Nothing and no one has the right to interfere, right?”
“Right,” said Eli.
“Not even universal supernatural law, no?”
Eli laughed. “I love you.”
The look Jasper shot him cemented this moment as a core memory for me. “Is she right?”
Eli shrugged, “It’s a hell of a risk, but I mean, she’s not wrong.”
The porch swing creaked.
Callum’s hand started moving again on the back of my neck.
I closed my eyes.
The onyx thread hummed deep inside my chest, and the gold and the silver hummed with it, and the four of them on this porch were the strongest thing I had ever been a part of, and we were sitting under a sentence of death the entire supernatural world was eventually going to want carried out.
I was tired.
I was not going to run again.
I leaned harder into Callum. His dark thread settled.
The wind moved in the cypress at the line of the preserve.
Callum kissed the top of my head, and the porch swing creaked, and we sat with it.
***
Rowena did not go to bed when the others did.
She stood at the railing long after the swing went still and the house went dark behind her, mulling over the information from Serena's debrief.
Basile had been there. He had recognized the bond. She was certain of it.
That old wolf had always been ambitious, but never stupid.
Now he had a daughter of the dark, mated into the Thornwood line, and a law older than Jerusalem to wield against them.
A Beaumont with a law on his side would not raise an alarm nor move too quickly.
He would move like water finding a crack in a foundation.
By the time you noticed, the damage would already be done.
She had given her children the evening, the dinner, one quiet night.
She would give them tomorrow too, if she could, but she did not think she had many tomorrows left to give.
***
Somewhere south of the lake, Naomi drove like the devil was in the back seat.
The wipers were losing to the rain, and the bond in her chest was growing thinner by the mile, fraying toward a thread with no far end she could find anymore.
She pressed the pedal flat to the floor and prayed for a miracle she had no right to ask for.
***