32. Lynn #3
Mr. Darcy, resplendent in his tiny bowtie, has escaped his ceremonial carrier. He’s making his way across the tablecloth with the determined waddle of a hamster on a mission.
“Oh no,” I breathe.
“What-”
The vampire reaches for his wine glass.
Mr. Darcy reaches the edge of the table.
What happens next occurs in slow motion and also somehow too fast to stop: Mr. Darcy launches himself, actually launches, with more athletic ability than I’ve ever seen from him, directly at the vampire’s hand.
His tiny teeth sink into an ancient, immortal finger.
The room goes silent.
The vampire looks down at the hamster attached to his hand. Mr. Darcy glares up at him with beady, unrepentant eyes.
“Well,” the vampire says, his voice like silk and shadows. “This is new.”
“I’m so sorry,” I blurt out. “He does this. He has no survival instinct. I can-”
“No need.” The vampire carefully detaches Mr. Darcy from his finger and sets him on the table. “I appreciate creatures who are unafraid to express themselves.”
Mr. Darcy performs his signature dramatic death routine.
The vampire actually smiles.
“Charming,” he says. “Truly charming.” He raises his glass, with his unbitten hand, toward me and Milo. “To the new queen. May your reign be long and your hamster remain eternal.”
The toast ripples through the room.
Mr. Darcy resurrects himself to accept a piece of cheese from the vampire’s plate.
I turn to Milo.
“Did my hamster just make friends with an ancient vampire?”
“I believe he did.”
“Is that a diplomatic incident?”
“Honestly?” Milo watches as the vampire offers Mr. Darcy another piece of cheese, his expression deeply amused. “I think it might be the most successful supernatural relations event of the century.”
The music swells again.
Another song starts, something slower, something warm, and Milo pulls me back into his arms.
“Happy?” he asks.
I look around the room.
At the three kings in the corner, serious conversation abandoned, competing to catch grapes in their mouths.
At their mates laughing by the dessert table.
At the flower girls asleep in a pile near the fireplace, baskets still clutched in their fists, and at the dragon shifters and the bear delegation, and the ancient vampire, who is now letting a hamster ride his shoulder like a tiny furry pirate.
And at the pack, my pack, dancing and celebrating and howling at the moon.
At all that moonlight still spilling through the windows, warm and present and impossibly fond.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m happy.”
Milo kisses my forehead.
“Good. Because this is forever, Lynn Crowe. This is the rest of our lives.”
“Draven,” I correct.
“What?”
“Lynn Draven. As of-” I check the clock on the wall, “-approximately two hours ago.”
His smile could light the world.
“Lynn Draven,” he repeats, like he’s tasting it. “My queen. My mate. My wife.”
“Your wife who is definitely going to make you learn the ‘Toxic’ choreography next.”
“I’d learn anything for you.”
“Even the chair dance?”
“Even the chair dance.”
He leans down, lips at the shell of my ear, and drops his voice so only I can hear it over the band.
“When this is over,” he murmurs, “when the last guest is gone and the doors are locked - I’m going to take this dress off you very, very slowly. And then I’m going to remind my wife exactly what she signed up for.”
The bond carries the promise straight down my spine, and I have to grip the front of his jacket to stay standing.
“Mrs. Draven,” he adds, wicked, feeling every bit of it. “You’re blushing.”
“That’s the moonlight.”
“That’s not the moonlight.”
It’s not the moonlight.
I rest my head against his chest, feeling his heartbeat under my cheek.
A year ago I was a scholarship kid with a thesis to finish and a hamster with delusions of grandeur, certain my story was a small one I was too afraid to reach for.
Now I’m standing in the middle of a hidden world that chose me by name, in a dress made of moonlight, loved by a man who looked at everything I was and decided it was enough.
I’m home.
The music plays. The candles flicker. My hamster has apparently bonded with a vampire, and somewhere in the universe, a goddess is smug about a match she made with a glowing pool and a lot of dramatic timing.
I close my eyes.
I breathe.
And I let myself feel it, all of it, the wonder and the chaos and the impossible, ridiculous joy of being exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Forever starts now.
And it looks an awful lot like dancing barefoot in the arms of the man who loves me, surrounded by everyone I love, in a world that shouldn’t exist but does, that shouldn’t want me but does, that opened its doors and said welcome home, Lynn Crowe, we’ve been waiting.
So I stay, in his arms, in this moment, in the life I chose and that chose me back.
And when the music ends and the guests go home and the moon finally sets, I take my husband’s hand and walk into whatever comes next.
Together.
THE END