Chapter 3
chapter three
. . .
denil
The tension had worked its way into my neck and shoulders somewhere around the toasts and wouldn't let go.
Twelve hours of smiling at people I'd never met had settled the tension into my muscles, along with a restlessness in my chest I couldn't resolve.
The ballroom had dimmed to its late-reception amber.
I'd been standing at the same high-top table for twenty minutes, cataloging the room's slow dissolve from event space into something looser and less controlled.
The blue wave carpet had disappeared under the dimmed lights, which was a mercy.
I'd been looking at that carpet for too many days, and the pattern had stopped being striking around the rehearsal dinner and started being the visual equivalent of someone tapping my shoulder during a phone call.
Not the hotel's fault. The Meridian was a competent property, well-managed and appropriately luxurious for what Celia had wanted. It just wasn't Stillwater.
Isak had parked himself on the stool beside me ten minutes ago with two glasses of something amber that wasn't champagne, and he'd been nursing his with the restlessness that meant he was about to start something.
Miner had taken the seat across from us, angled to watch the dance floor, his presence the steady counterweight to Isak's low-grade fizz.
We'd been here since the rehearsal dinner Thursday, and Miner had spent most of it managing us both without appearing to.
"She looks happy," Isak said, nodding toward the dance floor where Celia was swaying with Marshall, her head tipped back, laughing at something he'd said into her ear.
"She does." I took a sip of the whiskey Isak had handed me. It was good. Isak always knew what I'd drink before I did. "She earned it."
"She chose a three-hundred-person hotel ballroom over her brother's boutique property, and she's still happy. That's resilience."
I didn't rise to it. Isak agreed with Celia's choice. He'd been needling me about the venue since we'd arrived because he knew exactly where the sore spot was and enjoyed pressing on it.
"The venue doesn't matter," I said. "The marriage matters."
"The venue matters a little. You've been auditing the fire exits all weekend."
"Someone should."
Miner made a quiet sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "He's been scouting exits since we checked in. The bellman watched him do it and asked if we were security."
"I'm not security. I'm prepared."
"You're both." Miner's blue-gray eyes caught the pendant light, pale and steady. "It's one of your better qualities. It's also why you've been tense since Thursday."
I hadn't been tense. I'd been managing. There was a difference, and Miner knew it as well as I did. He'd chosen the wrong word anyway. He winked, and I eased a little farther into my seat despite myself.
The dance floor had thinned in the last hour.
Most of the older relatives had retreated to their rooms or the hotel bar, and what remained was the wedding party, a few determined clusters of friends, and the DJ playing toward an empty corner.
Celia's pack rotated around her in a loose orbit: her alpha, the two betas, their omega.
All of them moved with the ease of people who'd stopped performing hours ago and were just being together in the aftermath of the formal part.
I watched my baby sister spin under the lights, her dress catching gold, her face flushed and bright, and something lodged in my chest. Proud, yes. Relieved. A hollow spot remained, and I left it alone.
Seven years between us, and I'd spent most of them trying to keep her safe from things she'd never asked me to.
She'd let me, mostly. Then she'd gone and built a life that didn't need my protection at all.
This wedding was proof: the hotel, the guest list, the deliberate choice to keep me at arm's length from the planning.
She was happy. She was loved. She'd made the right call.
I'd wanted her to choose Stillwater. I'd wanted to give her that: the property I'd built, the space I'd designed to hold exactly this. And she'd looked at it and said no. Gently, with love, but no.
I tilted the glass all the way up. The whiskey burned on the way down, warm and clean, and I silently thanked the man who'd known I needed it.
I looked at Isak. His too-long dark curls were rumpled, the small silver stud in his left ear catching the light. He sat very still and waited to see what I'd do with the jab.
Miner shifted in his seat before either of us could dig in. His gaze moved from Isak to me, and he waited until we both looked back. "The cake was good," he said. "The honeysuckle one. I had two slices."
Isak grinned at him. "You had three. I counted."
"I'm on vacation."
"We're at a wedding. That's not vacation."
"It's a week off work at a luxury hotel with an open bar.
That's the definition of vacation." Isak leaned back, stretching his arms over his head with the casual ownership of someone who'd been comfortable since he walked in.
"You need to relax, Miner. Both of you do.
You've been wound tight since we got here. "
"You brought the swag bag," I said, and watched Isak's expression flicker, just for a second.
The swag bag. I'd seen it in the SUV when Isak opened the back to grab his garment bag, and I'd known right away what he was planning.
The bag was a black duffel, unassuming from the outside.
But I'd watched him pack it enough times to know what strained the zipper: heat-safe supplies, nesting materials, scent-neutral products, the emergency comfort system he'd built item by item and refined over years of Heat Seekers responses.
He called it guest experience. I called it over-preparation for a situation he was constitutionally incapable of refusing.
Which was why his Heat Seekers privileges had been revoked three months ago.
"That's just my emergency kit," Isak said, too casual. "I bring it everywhere. You made me retire the SWRunzDeep profile, remember?"
"You bring that bag anywhere you think you might get an alert."
"I bring it to hotels. Period. It's good practice."
"Your Heat Seekers privileges are suspended."
"Miner's isn't."
Miner raised an eyebrow but didn't jump in. He settled back and left the argument to me. He either agreed with me or had decided it wasn't worth having. With Miner, those were sometimes the same thing.
Isak had double-booked us. That was the reason Miner had taken over the app coordination three months ago with a single email that said, in its entirety:
Effective immediately, all Heat Seekers communications will route through my account. This is not negotiable.
-Miner
Isak had responded with a string of emojis that Miner had ignored, and that had been the end of it.
Two overlapping requests in one week. One had been straightforward: an omega in a neighboring town, experienced, heat-scheduled, vetted.
The other was last-minute, an emergency callout from an omega who'd pushed their suppressants too far, and Isak had said yes before checking the calendar.
Miner had suspended him before he could say yes to a third.
"We agreed," I said. "Alerts on for the week, responses only after the wedding."
"We agreed." Isak held up both hands. "And I've been very restrained. I haven't checked the app once."
"Because you don't have access."
"Because I've been restrained."
Miner pulled out his phone and tapped it for all of thirty seconds before he set it on the table, screen down. "The alerts are on. If something comes through, we'll discuss it. After the wedding."
"The wedding's over," Isak said with glee.
"The reception isn't."
"The formal part is. The cake is cut. The toasts are done." Isak grinned at me. "You heard Celia. She told us to enjoy the rest of the night."
Celia had, in fact, told us to enjoy the rest of the night.
She'd said it during the toasts, leaning over to our table with a glass of champagne and the brightness of a bride who'd decided nothing was going to ruin her day.
"Go have fun," she'd said, squeezing my hand.
"You've been working too hard. All three of you. Take the week."
I'd kissed her temple and told her I was proud of her, the cleanest version of what I'd actually felt. She'd smiled at me like she knew the rest.
"She's really done it," Isak said. His voice had dropped the needling edge, gone softer. "Bonded pack. Four people who look at her like that. Your moms are already planning the grandkids."
"Don't start on grandkids."
"I'm not starting. Ms. Carolann started. At the rehearsal dinner. She asked if Celia's omega was 'family-minded.'"
I closed my eyes briefly. "She didn't."
"She did. Miner was there."
Miner nodded. "She also asked if the pack had discussed 'timelines.' Ms. Bea told her to stop, and then they argued about whether it was too early to ask, and Ms. Carolann said it was never too early when the bond was solid."
I loved my mothers equally and completely.
They also had a gift for turning every family gathering into a referendum on things that weren't their business.
Mama Cee meant well. She always meant well.
She just meant well at a volume that occasionally made me want to sit at a separate table.
Mama Bea was the counterweight, the one who told her to stop. Mostly it worked.
"They're happy," Miner said. "That's what matters. Celia's happy, the pack's happy, and no one's explained chemical obedience to any service staff since Thursday."
"The uncles," I said. "They cornered a waiter."
"They cornered the florist this morning. It was handled."
"By who?"
"Celia's alpha. Politely." Miner's mouth twitched. "I think he's been preparing."