32. Lynn
— ? —
Lynn
The dress is heavier than I expected.
Heavy in a good way, in a substantial, this-is-really-happening way.
Yards of ivory silk cascade from my waist, hand-embroidered with tiny silver moons by pack members who apparently decided sleep was optional for the past three months.
Every time I move, the fabric catches the light and shimmers like something out of a dream I never dared to have.
“Stop fidgeting,” Isla says, adjusting my veil for the nineteenth time. “You’re going to wrinkle.”
“I’m going to pass out.”
“You’re not going to pass out. You’ve faced down rogue alphas, survived my mother’s interrogations, and successfully trained a hamster to play dead on command. You can handle a wedding.”
“Those things were easy. This is-” I gesture vaguely at the mirror, at the woman staring back at me who looks like a queen and feels like a fraud. “This is a lot.”
The door bursts open.
“FOUND HER!”
Cassius appears in the doorway, slightly out of breath, with a petite brunette tucked under his arm like a rescued kitten. She’s clutching three books to her chest and looks genuinely confused about why she’s being manhandled.
“I was in the middle of a chapter,” she protests.
“The ceremony starts in twenty minutes.”
“It was a really good chapter.”
“Fable.” A tall man appears behind Cassius, dark hair, sharp features, a presence that fills a room without trying. He’s smiling, though, fond and exasperated. “We talked about this.”
“You talked. I nodded and then went to the library.”
“You promised you’d stay in the garden.”
“The garden didn’t have a first edition of The Mysteries of Udolpho.”
I laugh before I can stop myself, and Fable’s eyes light up.
“You’re Lynn! The bride!” She extricates herself from Cassius’s grip and crosses the room to grab my hands, books still somehow balanced against her hip.
“Your library is incredible. I found seven titles I’ve never even heard of, and there’s an entire section on pre-Victorian gothic that I could live in forever.
How did you organize it? Is it Dewey Decimal or something custom?
Because the mythology section seems to have its own internal logic that I haven’t quite-”
“Fable.” The man, Orion, I realize, the king of Hartsgrove, places a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Breathing.”
“Right. Sorry. I’m Fable. Orion’s mate. I like books.”
“I noticed.” I squeeze her hands. “And the organization system is completely custom, designed by my mother-in-law with input from approximately everyone in the pack. It makes sense once you learn it.”
“Can you teach me?”
“After the ceremony.”
“You’d better not disappear on me,” I warn.
“Wild horses, darling. Nothing short of it.” She grins.
Orion steers her toward the door with the practiced ease of someone who has done this many, many times before. “We’ll see you at the altar. Congratulations, by the way. Milo’s been insufferable for months.”
“Good insufferable or bad insufferable?”
“The kind of insufferable where he won’t stop talking about how brilliant his mate is.” Orion’s eyes crinkle. “So good insufferable. Definitely good.”
They disappear into the hallway, and I hear Fable asking if there’s time to check one more shelf before the music starts.
“I like her,” I say.
“Everyone likes her.” Isla smooths a nonexistent wrinkle from my bodice. “Orion had to install locks on their library doors. She kept getting lost in there for days at a time.”
“That’s not a flaw, that’s a feature.”
“That’s exactly what she said.”
The next interruption arrives in the form of three small girls in matching lavender dresses, each carrying a basket of flower petals like it contains nuclear launch codes.
“We’re ready,” one of the girls announces, and she has the bearing of a general preparing for battle. “The petals are organized by color gradient. We practiced the distribution pattern fourteen times. There will be no mistakes.”
Behind her, a woman with honey-blonde hair and a warm smile appears in the doorway. She’s beautiful in an effortless way, and her grin lands as an invitation. I want to be her friend on sight.
“Girls, what did we say about military precision at weddings?”
“That it’s appropriate and expected,” the middle daughter replies.
“That it’s-” The woman sighs. “That’s not what I said at all.”
“Dad said it.”
“Of course he did.”
She catches my eye and grins, crossing the room to pull me into a hug I wasn’t expecting but desperately needed.
“I’m Barbie. Finn’s mate. These are our daughters - Maeve, Junie, and Poppy. They’ve been training for this moment since we got the invitation.”
“Training?”
“Flower girl bootcamp. Finn made obstacle courses.” She rolls her eyes fondly. “They can now distribute petals in any weather condition, on any terrain, while maintaining perfect spacing and posture.”
“That’s… thorough.”
“That’s my husband.” She pulls back, examining me with warm eyes. “You look beautiful, by the way. Absolutely stunning. Milo’s going to lose his entire mind.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s fantastic. Watching powerful men go nonverbal is one of my favorite hobbies.”
The smallest flower girl, Poppy, I think, tugs at my dress.
“Are you nervous?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be.” She pats my hand solemnly. “We won’t mess up the petals. We promise.”
“That’s very reassuring.”
“I know.”
Barbie herds her daughters toward the door, mouthing “good luck” over her shoulder. The middle one, Junie, is already quizzing her sisters on petal trajectory.
I turn back to the mirror.
The woman looking back at me is still wearing the dress, still crowned with flowers, still about to marry a lycan king in front of three hundred supernatural beings and one very judgmental hamster.
But she doesn’t look like a fraud anymore.
She looks ready.
And then it’s time, and Isla is pressing a bouquet into my hands, and the doors open. The compound courtyard has been transformed.
Candles float in the air, more of them than I can take in, actual floating, held aloft by pack magic I still don’t fully understand.
Milo.
My Milo.
He’s standing at the end of the aisle in a perfectly tailored black suit, and the moment I appear in the doorway, his entire face changes. His eyes go wide. His lips part. His hands, clasped in front of him, start to shake.
Through the bond, I feel everything, wonder and love and a desperate, aching joy that makes my chest tight.
Lynn.
Hi.
You’re-
I know.
I can’t-
I know.
The music starts. A classical piece Genevieve chose, strings and harp and a melody that makes everything feel sacred.
I start walking.
The flower girls go first, and they are, as promised, absolutely flawless. Petals fall in perfect arcs, distributed with mathematical precision. Maeve keeps her sisters in formation with tiny hand signals. Junie adjusts for wind conditions. Poppy beams at the crowd like she’s accepting an award.
Finn, standing near the front, looks like he might actually cry.
Then it’s my turn.
I walk alone. My parents offered, my mother cried when I explained that I wanted to do this myself, but they understood. This is the choice I’m making. The life I’m choosing. It felt right to walk toward it on my own two feet.
The guests blur as I pass. I catch glimpses, Genevieve in the front row, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief; Cassius standing tall at Milo’s side; pack members I’ve come to love over the past year, all watching with expressions that make my heart ache.
And there, at table four, a single figure in elegant black.
The vampire.
He’s exactly what you’d expect, pale, ancient, beautiful in an unsettling way. His eyes track me as I walk, dark and knowing, and when I meet his gaze, he inclines his head in a gesture of respect that feels older than language.
I elbow Milo through the bond.
Told you they’re sexy.
The growl that rumbles through his chest is audible.
Halfway down the aisle, I catch the vampire’s lips quirk.
He heard that.
Of course he heard that.
He raises his wine glass in my direction, a silent toast, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing.
Then I’m at the altar, and nothing else matters.
Milo takes my hands. His fingers are warm and steady, and his eyes, those beautiful moss-green eyes, are brighter than I’ve ever seen them.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi.” His voice cracks. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
“You look-”
“Don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry, and Isla spent two hours on this makeup.”
“I’m not going to cry.”
I dab under my eyes with a knuckle, careful of the makeup Isla threatened my life over, and lose the battle a little anyway.
“Your eyes are already red.”
“It’s allergies.”
“To what?”
“Beauty.” He squeezes my hands. “You’re beautiful, Lynn. So beautiful it hurts.”
The officiant, an ancient pack elder named Moira who has been performing bonding ceremonies for six hundred years, clears her throat.
“Are we ready?”
We nod.
She begins.
The words wash over me, old words, sacred words, promises that have bound wolf mates since before humans had writing. Moira speaks of loyalty and love, of the bond that ties two souls together across lifetimes. She speaks of the goddess’s blessing and the moon’s eternal witness.
And then, as if on cue, the clouds part.
Moonlight pours down like liquid silver, pooling over the altar, over us. It’s warm somehow, and it carries the faintest scent of wildflowers.
“Show off,” I mutter.
The light brightens pointedly.
“She’s insufferable,” Milo agrees, “but she’s not wrong to be proud.”
The crowd murmurs, some gasping, some laughing, all of them watching as the Moon Goddess herself makes her presence known. This is unprecedented. The goddess doesn’t typically attend weddings. But nothing about this has been typical, and apparently she’s decided to make that abundantly clear.
Moira continues as if divine intervention is perfectly normal.
Maybe for her it is.
“Lynn,” she says, “do you speak your vows?”
I turn to face Milo fully.