20. Emma #3
Claire found Emma by the dessert table not long after, two plates of cake balanced with the easy competence of a woman who’d apparently decided that showing up for her sister’s entire supernatural life meant showing up all the way.
“Your future mother-in-law already asked me three questions about my dating life and one about my blood pressure,” she said, handing over a plate.
“I like her. I’m terrified of her. Both things. ”
“Welcome to the club.” Emma bumped her shoulder against Claire’s, warm all the way through. “Thank you for coming. I know this is a lot.”
“It’s a lot. It’s also the first time in your entire life you’ve looked like this.” Claire nodded at the room, at Jace visible across it, laughing at something Roman had said. “I’ll take a lot if this is what’s on the other side of it.”
Jace’s mother found them twenty minutes later, flushed with celebration and totally without any filter left to speak of, and asked her question loud enough for half the lodge to hear.
“So. When can I expect grandchildren? I’m not asking for a timeline. I’m asking for an intention.”
Emma went scarlet. Jace, for the first time in the entire evening, matched her exactly, and the synchronized mortification lasted long enough for Roman to capture it on his phone for what he promised would be permanent blackmail material.
Nora appeared at Emma’s elbow moments later, drink in hand, utterly delighted with the entire scene. “I’m claiming full credit for this relationship, by the way. All of it. The engagement, the mate bond, the grandchildren conversation you’re currently recovering from.”
“You didn’t do anything, Nora.”
“I introduced emotional accountability into your life at exactly the moment you needed it, and I will be accepting that credit at every future family gathering, thank you.” She nodded toward the far corner, where Milo was very obviously failing to win a flirtation contest neither of them had officially declared.
“Also, I’m seeing someone. You may have noticed. ”
“I noticed weeks ago.”
“Good. I wanted witnesses.”
Emma found Jace alone for a rare quiet moment near the edge of the lodge’s porch, watching the party from a small distance with an expression she hadn’t seen on him—unguarded and a little lost, entirely at odds with the celebration behind him.
She came up beside him, leaning her weight into his side, and laced her fingers through his where his hand hung loose at the railing.
“Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere. Everywhere.” He turned to face her, hands settling at her hips.
“I spent years believing leadership meant never needing anyone. That the whole job was carrying everything alone so nobody else had to. I built an entire company on that idea, and I never once let myself notice how lonely the version of me who believed it genuinely was, because noticing would have meant admitting the plan wasn’t working. ”
“And now?”
“Now I have a mate who argues with me about tactical decisions, a team that teases me mercilessly, and a woman who taught me that needing someone isn’t weakness.” He kissed her, slow and grateful. “You didn’t only complete a bond, Emma. You completed a piece of me I didn’t know was unfinished.”
“That’s the most romantic thing you’ve said to a porch railing all night.”
“I’m aware. I’ve been practicing.”
Gerri found them near the edge of the celebration as the sun started sinking, pulling them both aside with a hand on each of their arms and an expression a lot more serious than anything she’d worn all evening.
“One private moment before I let the two of you go back to being disgustingly happy in public.” She looked between them, an unusual softness moving behind her sharp eyes.
“Mates are chosen every single day, not only at the claiming. The bond gives you the foundation. It doesn’t do the daily work of building on it.
Choose each other tomorrow. And the day after that.
That’s the actual secret, and nobody tells you because it sounds considerably less romantic than a wedding. ”
She kissed each of their cheeks, sharp and quick, and disappeared into the crowd before either of them could respond.
The celebration wound down past midnight, guests drifting home in loose, happy clusters, and Emma looked around for Gerri to say goodnight only to find her nowhere in the thinning crowd.
“Has anyone seen Gerri?”
Nobody had. Nobody could remember exactly when she’d left, or how.
He found the note on the porch railing on his way to lock up, folded once, Gerri’s elegant handwriting catching the last of the porch light. Emma joined him a moment later, tucking herself against his side, reading over his shoulder.
Thank you for believing in an impossible match. It was never impossible. It only needed someone patient enough to see it.
Tucked beneath the note sat a second folder, thin, official-looking, open to a single page.
A new client file. A new name.
“She’s already got another match lined up,” Emma said, half laughing, half disbelieving. “The woman watched us finish an entire war and immediately started planning the next impossible pairing.”
Jace picked up the folder, looked out over the empty drive where Gerri’s car had been parked an hour ago, gone without a single goodbye, exactly as she always managed it, and pulled Emma close.
“Wherever she’s gone,” he said, “she’s performing miracles.”