Chapter 26 Paradise, After All
Paradise, After All
Cassie
Nobody spoke for several seconds after Ronan said no one would touch me, my family, or Ian. That was probably because everyone was busy mentally sorting the categories of the afternoon.
Dead rival Alpha in fountain.
Ruined wedding.
Actual werewolves.
My sister’s dog promoted himself to supernatural security.
Ian naked.
That last one was becoming a problem. Not for me, exactly.
I had seen him naked before, and my opinion remained supportive.
The problem was that my father was standing ten feet away with a champagne bottle gripped in one hand, his face locked in a state of paternal horror so complete it had almost become spiritual.
“He needs pants,” Dad repeated.
Ian looked down at himself.
I felt the small ripple of his embarrassment through the bond before his face could manage anything so human. It was subtle. Barely there. To anyone else, he probably looked like a blood-covered nightmare considering a tactical inconvenience.
To me, he felt mortified.
A laugh pushed up through my chest. It hurt. Everything hurt.
Ian’s head snapped toward me. “Cassie.”
“I’m fine.”
Sava appeared at my side so fast I nearly jumped. “Lie again and I will sedate you in front of both families.”
“I am mostly fine.”
“You are bleeding through your sweater.”
“That feels less like a character flaw and more like a medical observation.”
“It is both.”
Ian’s arm tightened around my waist, careful but absolute. The bond pulsed with worry, deep and hot and still new enough that I almost forgot to be annoyed by it.
Almost.
“Do not start looming,” I told him.
“I am holding you upright.”
“With looming energy.”
His mouth twitched.
God.
There he was.Still blood-covered. Still too large and too dangerous for the ruined courtyard around him. Still looking like every dark thing this world had made of him. But beneath it, through the bond, I felt him trying to stay with me instead of slipping back behind the walls.
That was new.
That was ours.
Ronan removed his coat and held it out to Ian without looking directly at him.
Ian took it and my father made a sound of relief so intense it bordered on religious.
The coat didn’t solve much. Ian was much larger than Ronan, and the coat barely reached mid-thigh, but it at least gave Dad something to pretend was modesty.
Aunt Linda looked disappointed.
“Linda,” my mother said sharply.
“What? I said nothing.”
My mother closed her eyes.
I leaned harder against Ian because if I didn’t, I might fall over from blood loss or family absurdity. Possibly both.
Ronan looked at Sava. “Take her inside.”
“No,” I said at once.
Every wolf looked at me. I was getting tired of that. It had been flattering the first few times, in a very alarming way. Now I mostly felt like suggesting name tags and assigned staring hours.
“No?” Ronan asked.
“I want to know what happens to my family.”
My father stepped forward. “Your family wants to know what happened to your family.”
Ronan’s gaze moved to him.
Dad didn’t flinch, which surprised me. He was terrified. I could see it in the stiff set of his shoulders and the way his fingers tightened around the champagne bottle. But he stood there anyway, staring at a man who radiated authority in a courtyard full of dead wolves.
For all his faults, my father had come back for me with a bottle and no plan.
Ronan said, “You will be given answers.”
“That sounds like something people say before a cover-up.”
“It is a cover-up,” Cormac said from the wet stone, where he had apparently decided sitting down was the line between dignity and collapse. “We are simply trying to make it a humane one.”
Dad stared at him.
Aunt Linda turned toward Cormac with sudden interest. “Are you always this honest when bleeding?”
Cormac looked up at her. He was pale, soaked, and bleeding through the makeshift pressure bandage Sava had slapped onto his shoulder. Somehow, he still managed a faint, dry smile.
“Only with strangers.”
Linda smiled back. “Good to know.”
Tessa made a choked sound beside me.
I looked at her. She was watching Aunt Linda flirt with an injured werewolf in the middle of a murder courtyard. Her face suggested this was somehow the detail that finally broke her.
“Cassie,” she whispered. “Is Aunt Linda flirting?”
“Yes.”
“With a wolf?”
“A bleeding wolf.”
“I hate that this clarifies nothing.”
Cormac’s gaze flicked to us. “For the record, I am not shifted.”
I started laughing.
Sava gave me a look. “Stop laughing. It uses abdominal muscles you have forfeited.”
“I didn’t forfeit them. They were taken.” I pointed out.
“By foolishness.”
“By werewolves.”
“Today, those categories overlap.”
Ronan’s mouth tightened as if he was considering whether he had time to develop a headache.
Ian’s hand moved over my shoulder, warm against the exposed mark. The gold under my skin had dimmed, but not vanished. It pulsed once when he touched it, and his breath shifted.
My mother saw and her eyes widened.
“Marianne,” Aunt Linda said softly.
Mom took a step toward me. “Does it hurt?”
The question was small. Not about wolves. Not about laws. Not about what she had seen or what we were all supposed to pretend this could become.
Just me.
I swallowed. “Less now.”
That was not exactly true. My body was a map of terrible decisions and supernatural consequences. The mark still burned. My hip was wet with blood. My ribs felt like they had entered negotiations with gravity and lost.
But the bond no longer felt like it was being torn out of me.
It felt settled, terrifyingly settled.
Ian’s thumb brushed once over the edge of the mark, and the comfort that moved through me was warm enough that I forgot everyone else could see my face.
Tessa looked from me to Ian.
“Oh,” she said.
I blinked. “Oh, what?”
“Oh, that is very real.”
My cheeks heated. “Could you please have this revelation less publicly?”
“I have been traumatized,” Tessa said. “My filter is gone.”
Grant made a muffled sound behind both hands, still clutching his bleeding nose.
No one asked him if he was okay.
It was a beautiful family moment.
Sava finally snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Inside. Now.”
I opened my mouth.
Ian said, “Cassie.”
That was all. Just my name. Low, rough, threaded with the feeling I had been trying very hard not to look at too directly. Fear. Love. Guilt. Relief.
He was not ordering me, he was just asking me to live.
My argument died a small but dramatic death.
“Fine,” I said. “But I want everyone where I can see them.”
Ronan nodded once. “The east dining room. It has no windows into the public grounds and can be secured.”
My father lifted the champagne bottle. “Are we prisoners?”
“No,” Ronan said.
Cormac added, “Not if everyone behaves.”
Dad looked at him. “That is not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be.”
Aunt Linda smiled. “He is delightful.”
“Linda,” Mom said again.
We left the courtyard in pieces. Cormac had to be hauled up by two wolves because he pretended he could stand alone and then almost collapsed into a dead hedge.
Sava threatened everyone within arm’s reach.
Ian kept me tucked against his side, still wearing Ronan’s coat and nothing else, which was an image I was probably going to revisit later when I had more blood in my body.
Henry insisted on walking between me and Ian like a tiny chaperone. Every few steps, he looked up at Ian suspiciously.
Ian looked down at him. “I saved your human.”
Henry sneezed.
“He remains undecided,” Cormac said behind us.
“You remain bleeding,” Sava said. “Do not start.”
The east dining room looked as if a wealthy family should be having a rehearsal brunch inside it. White walls. Dark beams. Long polished table. Vases of flowers that had survived the morning by being uninvolved. Someone had already pulled the curtains, and two wolves stood outside the doors.
A very young wolf brought Ian clothes without making eye contact. Ian disappeared into a side pantry and came back in black pants and a dark sweater that stretched across his shoulders in a way my mother very carefully didn’t notice.
Aunt Linda noticed. Tessa noticed Aunt Linda noticing and choked on a hysterical laugh.
Dad noticed all of us noticing and pointed at the table. “Everyone sit down.”
Ronan, who had given actual Alpha commands in a courtyard full of blood, seemed oddly willing to let my father organize chairs.
Maybe he was tired. Maybe he recognized that a human father with a champagne bottle and unanswered questions was its own kind of Alpha problem.
Sava pushed me into a chair, then began treating me in front of everyone because apparently dignity had not survived the courtyard.
“Do we have to do this here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“My family is watching.”
“They saw wolves eat people today.”
“That is a strong point.”
Ian crouched beside my chair, one hand resting on the back of it, close enough that I felt him through the bond even when he didn’t touch me. He looked calmer now, not healed yet, but present.
Every once in a while, the bond tightened with the ghost of what he had almost done. Every time, I pressed my fingers against his. Every time, he came back.
Ronan stood at the head of the table.
He had changed his coat, but there was still blood at his collar.
“Here are the rules,” he said.
My father muttered, “Finally.”
I elbowed him lightly. It hurt me more than him.
Ronan continued. “No one in this room speaks about what happened here to anyone outside this room without my approval.”
Dad leaned forward. “You mean ever?”
“Yes.”
“That is not reasonable.”
Ronan looked at him. “Neither are werewolves. Yet here we are.”
Aunt Linda lifted one finger. “Do vampires exist?”
“No,” Ronan said.
Cormac, from the other end of the table where Sava had forced him into a chair, said, “Mostly no.”
Ronan turned his head.
Cormac looked innocent. “What? Accuracy matters.”
My mother pressed both hands to her temples. “Mostly?”
“Later,” I said quickly. “We are not doing vampires today.”
Aunt Linda looked disappointed.