Chapter Thirty-Seven
Elena
Marcus's wedding to a woman he'd met in the months since returning home — a quiet, kind veterinarian named Isabelle who'd shown no interest whatsoever in Castellan Group's wealth and considerable interest in the man himself — took place at Ashcombe in early summer, the estate's grounds in full bloom for the first time in years, and it was there, at the edge of the reception under a canopy of string lights, that Damon finally did the thing he'd been quietly building toward for months.
He didn't make a scene of it. He simply took her hand during a slow song, the same easy weight she'd felt at the gala all those months ago, and led her a short distance from the crowd to the edge of the rebuilt east wing — no longer a scarred ruin but a bright, restored structure standing whole against the summer sky, exactly as he'd promised at the end of winter.
"I wanted to ask you here," he said, "because this is where I told you I wanted to rebuild something that fire tried to take from me.
And you helped me do that. Not just the wing, Elena.
Everything. My family. My brother. My understanding of my own father.
My ability to trust another person with anything that mattered.
" He knelt then, and Elena's breath caught entirely.
"I've spent this whole speech in my head a hundred times, and every version comes back to the same truth, so I'll just say it plainly.
I love you. Not because of the danger we survived together, but despite it — because underneath all of it, you are the steadiest, most honest, most extraordinary person I have ever known, and I do not want to spend one more day of my life without you fully, permanently in it. "
He opened the small box in his hand — a ring, simple and unshowy exactly as he'd designed it, quiet the way she was quiet, essential the way she'd become essential to every part of his life.
"Elena Voss. Will you marry me?"
Elena was crying before she'd fully processed the question, her hands coming up to cover her mouth, and behind them, unnoticed, the wedding reception had gone quiet, Marcus and Isabelle and Anya and half the guests turning to watch with held breath.
"Yes," Elena said, pulling him up to kiss him before he'd even finished sliding the ring onto her finger. "Yes, Damon, of course, yes."
The reception erupted into cheers around them, and Damon Castellan — the man the world had once called cold, untouchable, feared by everyone — stood at the edge of his family's rebuilt home holding the woman he loved, and laughed, open and unguarded, the sound carrying clear across the summer garden.