Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jessa
I always told myself that I would never get married. That Mia was enough for me.
But today as I stand in front of the full-length mirror, the deep green dress flowing down my body, a silver mark on my neck, I can’t help but smile. Life certainly has its ironies.
A wedding ring glints on my finger from the day Marcus dragged me to the town hall to get our marriage registered.
It’s a wonder he was able to wait three months to do it.
I smooth my hands down the dress, and my heart skips a beat.
I didn’t think anybody could want me like this, but Marcus has broken every doubt I might have harbored.
The way he loves me, dotes on me, it’s healing parts of me that I never knew needed it.
I put two fingers on the mark at the curve of my shoulder. It’s faded to a small silvered patch, no bigger than my thumb, the skin gone smooth across it. When I touch it, the bond answers, a slow pulse under my ribs that has never once been my own heartbeat.
The door bangs open hard enough to rattle the wardrobe.
“Mom.” Mia is through it first, hair braided down her back, her ribbon already coming loose. “Tell Bella the left side is mine.”
“The elder said whoever holds the ribbon walks on the left.” Bella arrives at her heels in pale green, chin up, both hands behind her back where I can’t see what she’s holding. “I’m holding the ribbon.”
“You’re holding a lantern.”
“I’m holding both.”
“That’s cheating.”
“Enough.” I turn from the mirror. “You’ll walk side by side. Nobody is on anybody’s left.”
Both of them go quiet, and Bella stops with one shoe half off. “Jessa.” Her voice goes small. “You look beautiful.”
I smile at her. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
“Dad is going to cry.” Mia says it with total confidence, dropping onto the end of the bed to fix her sock. “He’s such a crybaby when it comes to you.”
“Uncle Marcus is not a crybaby!” Bella protests.
“You’re supposed to call him Dad, silly!” Mia scolds her. “And you have to call Mom Mom. You keep forgetting.”
Bella looks sheepish. “Sorry.”
I give her a one-armed hug. “It’s okay, baby. You take your time. Now out you go.” I point at the door. “Both of you, downstairs, before somebody’s ribbon ends up in the hedge.”
They go, still bickering, and the sound of them thunders down the stairs. I turn back to the mirror. The door opens again, and I sigh. “Girls—”
Marcus fills the frame in dark formal clothes, the collar high and closed, his hair pulled back off his neck. He’s shaved.
“You’re not supposed to see me yet.” I frown at him.
“You look so beautiful.” I can hear the awe in his voice.
“Marcus.” I melt at his words.
He pushes the door shut behind him with one hand, still looking. He looks at me until I have to fill the silence.
“Is something wrong?”
“There’s nothing wrong.” He crosses the floor and stops near enough that I have to tip my head back. His hand comes up to the curve of my shoulder, two fingers settling over the mark. “You’re perfect.”
He says it without a scrap of teasing in it, and that’s worse than any line he’s ever used on me. My eyes sting before I can stop them.
“So are you.” My voice comes out unsteady.
His thumb strokes once across the silvered skin. “Are you nervous?”
“A little, yes.”
He draws me in until my forehead rests against his, one arm banding low across my back.
“I never thought I’d have this,” he says.
“A mate?”
“A home.”
My knees go unreliable, so I get a hand on his chest. “You had a home.”
“I had a house full of furniture I didn’t choose.” His mouth grazes my temple. “Until the two of you walked into it, I had no idea how much of me was standing empty.”
“Stop.” A laugh escapes me with tears behind it. “You’ve turned dangerous with words. Somebody needs to take them off you.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” he murmurs, and then he kisses me.
It’s soft. His hand cradles the back of my skull, his mouth moves over mine slowly, and every knot I’ve been holding since noon comes loose. I get both hands into the front of his shirt without meaning to, and then small knuckles hammer the door.
“You’re not allowed to be late to your own mating ceremony!” Mia bellows through the wood.
“And if you ruin her face you have to fix it yourself!” Bella adds.
Marcus drops his forehead onto my shoulder and groans. I laugh until my eyes water.
They’ve strung the lights between the trees.
The clearing behind the pack house opens under a canopy of them, hundreds of small bulbs looped from trunk to trunk, lanterns hanging low enough to touch.
Long wooden tables run in rows down the whole of one side, loaded end to end, with candles in jars set along the middle of every one.
Somebody has jammed white flowers into every gap.
Children tear between the table legs shrieking, and off to the left, a couple of men are arguing over a fiddle.
There’s a boy of about six under the nearest table with an entire bowl of frosting, and nobody has spotted him yet.
They part for Marcus as he comes through, and the ones closest to him drop their eyes. When he steps forward, three hundred voices go quiet at once.
Adrian waits at his shoulder in a dark jacket, a thin pale line still visible across his throat. Cole and Tomas keep still behind him, chins down. Tomas crosses his eyes at Bella, and Cole mimes a swoon at Mia. Marcus turns his head about two degrees, and both of them snap upright.
The girls go ahead of me. Mia carries the lantern with both hands, chin down, her ears scarlet.
She keeps sneaking looks at the crowd to check if they’re watching her do it.
Bella has the ribbon looped over her wrists, working hard at looking solemn.
It lasts nine steps until she catches Rachel’s youngest waving and beams straight through it. My chest hurts watching them.
Zaheela meets us at the center with her hands clasped. “A bond is instinct,” she says, and her voice reaches the tree line without effort. “It arrives whether you want it or not, and it asks nothing of you.”
She waits, then starts again. “A mating is a promise. One you have to keep even on the days you’d rather not.”
An old man behind me says that’s right, and half a dozen voices back him. Zaheela turns to Marcus, and her eyes crease.
“Alpha.”
Marcus faces me, and the whole clearing might as well have emptied out. “I spent years telling everyone my life was already full,” he says.
He takes my hand. “Then this one turned up on my road in a dead car, shouting at me through a gap in the window about pepper spray she didn’t have.”
The pack laughs, and somebody at the back whistles. I narrow my eyes at him, and he grins straight back.
“Marcus,” I whisper.
“She gave me my daughter.” His voice roughens, and he lets it. “Every single thing that ever happened to her said don’t trust him, and she trusted me anyway.”
He stops, and Adrian shifts his weight beside him. Marcus breathes out.
“She has filled parts of me I didn’t think I was lacking.”
My eyes fill on that one, so I lift my chin and hold it there until the sting passes. “In front of the pack.” His hand tightens around mine. “I take Jessa as my mate and as my wife.” His eyes hold mine. “She’s already my home, and I’ll keep choosing her.”
The whole field answers him at once, low enough that I feel it come up through my shoes. Then it’s my turn, and my mouth goes dry. Marcus squeezes my hand. Through the bond, his patience pours into me, steady, entirely his. I hold on to it.
“I spent ten years believing I had to do everything by myself,” I manage. “For a long time I called that strength.”
A woman in the front row nods at me and doesn’t look away. I keep going.
“Maybe it was, for a while. Then this man decided he was going to stand next to me whether I wanted it or not.” My voice steadies. “It turns out I finally have someone big enough to stand there.”
I turn to Marcus properly. “You’re bossy, and you’re convinced you’re right about everything.”
Cole coughs into his fist. Tomas mutters something behind him that sets two whole rows laughing, and Marcus doesn’t even look around.
“You’re also the best father I’ve ever known.” My throat closes, and I push through it. “You gave up an entire pack for Bella.”
I have to stop there. Marcus waits me out.
“You loved Mia before you had any claim on her, and you loved me while I was doing everything in my power to make it difficult.”
Marcus’s jaw works. “So I choose you.” I hold his gaze. “The bond didn’t decide that, and neither did Mia.” My voice splinters halfway through. “You’re Marcus, and you’re mine.”
Zaheela steps back and raises one hand.
He lifts his own to the curve of my shoulder, where the silver sits bare against my skin, and touches the mark. Then he bends and sets his mouth to it, carefully, barely a press of his lips.
The bond opens. It comes up through my chest in a slow flood, spreading out under my ribs and down both arms. My eyes shut.
Every heartbeat in me lines up behind his.
Then the rest of them arrive, hundreds of people I couldn’t have named an hour ago, and I know where every one is standing without looking.
I open my eyes and put my hand over his heart. “Every beat of this has my name on it,” I tell him quietly.
His breath catches. All around the clearing, hands come up over hearts, heads going down into the dark. Zaheela’s is the first.
Then two small bodies hit us at a dead run.
Marcus scoops both girls up, one on each arm, and Bella shrieks loudly enough to startle birds out of the trees.
Mia has an arm hooked around his neck and the other stretched out for me.
I take her hand while the tears finally get past me, and I let them come.
Somebody with a fiddle starts playing, and the clearing turns over into noise.