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Leah had almost-left Bran several times. She had $50,000 in a go-bag at the base of her bedroom wardrobe, a second passport under a different name, and there was an apartment waiting for her in New York, currently leased to a terrible artist. It was a start. She could get by, she thought, without him.
One day, her wolf promised her. One day you can go.
Bran sighed as he came into the kitchen where she was eating breakfast. It was his bad news sigh. “You won’t like what I’m about to say.”
She put down her spoon. “All right.”
“We need to get married.”
Leah waited a moment. “I see. And why do we need to get married.” They were already married. They have been, at least. When they had met, she had been a very proper young lady – from a very proper werewolf family – and her parents, her mother in particular, had expected a wedding with a mating. There had even been a wedding ring, though she hadn’t the faintest idea where that was now.
“Because a wedding certificate from the 1800s won’t cut it.” He tapped his hand on the table. “Apparently, it’s a tax thing.”
Ah. Money. That made more sense. She knew Charles had been wanting to ‘refresh’ their profiles. “Okay. When do you want to do this?” She imagined some paperwork would need to be signed in front of strangers. Or if she was particularly unlucky, the looming presence of his terrifying offspring and their loving mates.
“I was thinking it might be nice to do it properly…”
Leah closed her eyes. You’re killing me, she wanted to say, wanted to scream. “The pack does love a wedding,” was what she actually said because it was the honest truth as well. “Particularly after what happened.” With Sage. Her almost-friend.
He touched the side of her head and she bent it. “That’s what I thought. Thank you.”
He left her then.
*
“I’d like to invite all the North American alphas.”
Leah stirred the pot. She opened her mouth to say something positive – even if it tripled the size of the wedding and the subsequent organisation - when she realised what that would mean. “She’s not staying here,” she snapped.
“That’s fine.”
Her mate leaned over to dip his little finger into the ragu to try it whilst she raged, raged at the thought of Mercy coming back for her sham of a wedding. She wanted to spit. Instead, she reached for the salt.
At least Isabelle, that over-sexed bitch was dead. Isabelle and Mercy in the same location would probably have made her spontaneously combust.
“I’ve asked Anna to be my maid of honour,” she said, because having an Omega next to her whilst she truthfully told Bran she would love, honour and obey him and he would in turn lie to her face would probably be helpful. “She’s not technically a maid, of course, but I don’t think tradition really counts here.”
Bran nodded. “Charles is going to be my best man.”
“Only fair. Sam was last time.”
“Exactly.” Bran smiled at her, pleased, like she was a dog that had done a particularly fine trick.
If she kept adding salt, the ragu was going to be ruined. She lowered the temperature right down and put the lid on.
“Is this for tonight?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Can we have garlic bread?”
The uncomplicated pleasure of feeding her mate bloomed inside of her. “Certainly.”
*
On Fridays, Leah liked to go for a hunt, on her own. It was the one thing she really looked forward to all week. There had been a time when Bran would come with her, when they’d camp out under the stars and talk about the land. That was a long time ago, though, before he was truly the Marrok, before the world shrunk around them and suddenly he was the judge, jury and executioner to hundreds of wolves across the country.
As she slunk through the firs, through the trees of the landscape that was Aspen Creek, she thought about the mistakes she had made. There was the big one - she had mated to Bran when he asked because, being beautiful and wealthy, she had been spoiled her whole life and it had never occurred to her that she couldn’t get this powerful man to love her. She’d thought it an easy challenge, particularly given how compatible they were in bed. It had taken decades for her to realise that Bran’s mind was a steel trap. When he said he would never love her, he had meant it.
Her mother – long dead – had called her stupid the night before her wedding. She had mated to a werewolf; she seen what Leah had not.
Pickings were slim that night – she chased down a rabbit, boring, and crunched its little bones. The fox had been more entertaining because the chase was more involved but ultimately she wasn’t hungry and he had provided her enough entertainment that she could let him go. She found a good rock for a good scratch and rolled around on her back, looking up through the trees at the stars.
Three weeks until the wedding. She resolved to think of it as nothing more than a party. They sometimes held them. They were hard work and then they were over.
*
“What are you going to wear?” Anna asked.
Leah, who had been organising weddings in Aspen Creek since she had moved there, blinked at her. “Wear?” she repeated.
“I mean—“
“I know what you mean.” She covered her face with her hands. It was too much. “I haven’t thought about it.”
Leah thought about everything. She was incredibly detailed. She had sent out invitations. She had reserved rooms. She had organised the catering and hired a band. There was a wet weather scenario, a ‘too hot’ scenario and a scenario involving some kind of werewolf emergency. There would be a doctor on call.
She went through her wardrobe, just in case. She had three dresses – one for Thanksgiving, which doubled as her funeral dress, one for Christmas and one she wore for weddings in the summer. She had no other reason to wear dresses on a day to day basis. She never went anywhere. If she thought an occasion required ‘smartening up’, she would wear a pair of heels. She had a lot of heels – it was her only excess.
She pulled out the dress she had worn to every wedding for the last ten years. She had only recently worn it to Anna’s. It was a pale yellow shirtdress, long, with a full skirt. She had liked the way it swished around her when she moved. She wore it with her mother’s pearls.
Leah couldn’t wear it to her own ‘wedding’, though. Everyone had seen it. It would reflect poorly on Bran she thought, as well as herself. Like he didn’t have the resources and she didn’t care.
Bran manifested in her bedroom, drawn by her panic. “What is it?” he said, eyes searching the room for the source of her distress.
“I forgot to get a dress. What are you wearing? A suit? Do you have a suit?” She didn’t think she’d seen him in a suit, not for decades. He would look painfully handsome, she had no doubt.
“Yes. No tie, though.” Shoulders relaxed, and a smirk that suggested she was being ridiculous, he came to look at her clothes. He fingered the velvet mid-night blue dress she wore at Christmas. She knew he liked her in this, from the speed with which he divested her of it. “I imagine there are stores for this sort of thing.”
“Probably,” she sighed. She didn’t have time to go shopping. Perhaps she could buy something online. That was what busy people did. Nordstrom’s or something?
Bran pursed his lips. “I’ll admit this spiralled.”
She closed the doors of her wardrobe, firmly. “It’s fine. The pack will enjoy it,” she said, reminding herself this was why they were doing this.
*
She bought five dresses, online, and had them delivered in the fastest manner possible. She debated, briefly, before ringing Anna.
“I want you to come and tell me which one,” she said to her, aggressively. She hoped the undertone of because I don’t care was clear. Anna had been the last female to marry in Aspen Creek. She recalled she had made limited fuss about the wedding herself.
Anna arrived with two other werewolf females from the pack and by her eyes she dared Leah to complain. Leah bared her teeth at them, to remind them that she was their Alpha’s mate and this was his home and if they even thought in his direction she would rip their throats out.
“Now that’s out of the way,” Anna said bracingly, “where shall we do this?”
Leah took them up to her bedroom, closing the interconnecting door between their rooms as the women entered. The dresses were already laid out on the bed, unwrapped from their tissue paper and protective bags.
All three cooed and headed towards the dresses as if they were starving and each dress was a full roast.
In an experience Leah would pay money to forget, she dressed in each of the dresses and stood, resentfully, in front of one women she barely respected and two she had entirely ignored for more than twenty-years.
“You’ve got an amazing figure,” one – Susannah – said without a hint of brownnosing, more like she was studying a piece of art. “They all look great on you.”
Leah knew this. She was well aware that, despite her height, she had a body that worked well for modern fashion. It hadn’t always. She had been far too tall for her mother’s liking. “I don’t want it to look too bridal. I’m already married. This is a fake wedding for a fake reason,” she muttered. They’d already completed the paperwork that made them legally bound. Again.
She stood in front of the mirror in the chiffon dress. It had a halter-neck and she thought that it highlighted her bosom too much, lifting and separating and leaving a deep v down to the bones of her upper ribcage. There was no back. It cinched in tightly at the waist and then flared out to her ankles. On the website it hadn’t looked so poofy. She gave a small hop and the skirt ballooned. It was too much.
“That one, then,” Anna said, pointing to the dress they had hung from the wardrobe door. She had a clear favourite, from the beginning. Her choice was a floor-length ivory dress with a high round neck, short sleeves, a slit up to her thigh with a scooped back.
Leah fingered the material. It was plain, some modern fabric mix that was soft but draped well. “I did like this one,” she mused. It was very elegant. Perhaps too elegant, she thought, for a wedding in their back yard. Would it look like she was trying too hard?
“The lace one is very summer casual, though,” Nora put in, echoing her thoughts. She had thrown her weight behind that dress before Leah had even tried it on. Leah’s hesitation had only been that it was quite sheer, with lace panels that only faintly protected her modesty and wouldn’t allow for a brassiere. Apparently there was sticky tape that was suitable for this. Though nudity was not a problem - a wedding dress was a different matter, surely? But then she had, as Bran had pointed out repeatedly, quite 19th Century notions.
Her deliberations were interrupted by commotion downstairs. She felt Bran call for her and she instinctively stopped everything she was doing.
“Wait, Leah, shouldn’t you change?” Anna laughed as she left the room.
Leah cast her a dismissive look. “He wants me,” she said, hurrying downstairs, the dress susurrating around her. She rounded the corner of the staircase and viewed the living area as a whole. Bran, Charles, a stranger, another stranger.
“Oh,” Bran said as she descended, his expression changing rapidly from irritation, to surprise, to… something else. She didn’t know. He could be difficult to read, even for her.
She looked at the strangers. Werewolves, both of them, but Bran exuded no concern so she knew she wasn't in imminent danger. They had their eyes lowered, as was proper, and were dressed in dark jeans and button-downs. If her entire being hadn’t honed down her physical preference to one male, she might have said they were both very handsome. “Who are they?”
“They’re from St. John’s pack. They regret that he is unable to attend the wedding,” Charles said, looking between Bran and Leah with interest.
St. John was her father.
“I wasn’t aware that we had invited St. John,” Bran said lightly.
“I sent you the guest list for approval, which you approved,” she said, mildly. She had emailed it to him, marking it as Priority and put St. John at the top so even if he was too busy with other matters he would notice. Bran had invited Mercedes, a woman – a girl – who had nearly destroyed her marriage and for whom she had long suspected Bran harboured a distinctly un-fatherly interest. She clenched her teeth together. “I didn’t expect him to attend. He could have just sent an RSVP.”
The Left Stranger proffered this document. “My lady,” he said, bowing.
‘My lady’. Leah rolled her eyes. More than three hundred years in America and St. John still considered himself, and his family, to be aristocracy. Bran had browbeaten that attitude from her through sheer force of will.
“Don’t call me that,” she said, snatching the card from him. Indeed, a cross had been put through the option of attending and then St. John had scrawled something. She tilted it to the light and squinted. He really did have dreadful handwriting. “He says he’s sure I will look beautiful and that he hopes I will like his gift. What gift?”
Right Stranger shifted, nervously. “It’s in the car.”
“You must have done something very bad to get this task,” Leah said, remembering well her father’s methods, despite being pleasantly free of him for two centuries. She pursed her lips and gestured impatiently to the front door. “Let’s go then.”
She was, without much hope, praying it was something appropriate. A tea set she would never use, perhaps. Some of her late mother’s jewellery that Charles would have insured and put in a safe. Silverware – that would be nice. A crystal bowl that would break during the first full moon.
It wasn’t.
“That’s a child,” Leah said, sighing deeply, holding the gathered skirts of the ridiculous dress above the slightly damp gravel.
It was sleeping in a car seat, one hand clutching a plastic giraffe.
Leah took a moment to control her temper, her eyes closed. It was so much better not looking that she kept them closed for another few seconds. “Bran, my father has sent us a child. As a gift.”
Bran put his hand on the small of her back. He touched her rarely; it felt like a brand of heat on her bare skin. “He always had a way of things.”
“We can’t keep it,” she said to the Left and Right Strangers who, confusingly, had switched sides.
They looked at each other and winced. “That’s not really an option,” Left Stranger said, unwrapping a piece of paper from his pocket – a birth certificate. “The child’s paperwork has been prepared. We had a heck of a time getting her into the country. Getting her out would be nearly impossible.”
A girl. Leah wanted to vomit, remembering the last time, how she had grown to be Leah’s own personal torment and shame. She appealed to Bran. Deal with this, she demanded at the bond that lay between them. Sometimes he listened.
Bran stroked her back, thumb running over the knobs of her spine. “Let me see this, please,” he said, taking the birth certificate when it was offered. She didn’t have to look at it to know that under ‘Mother’ would be her name and under ‘Father’ would be Bran’s. “Would this withstand scrutiny?”
They nodded.
“Fine. Charles? Anna?” Bran said to the assembled group behind them. “Leah’s father has sent us a gift which we, in turn, would like you to take responsibility for.”
Of course. Leah felt her very bones relax. She jolted suddenly. “Oh, god, is she one of his?” she demanded of the men. At their look of sheer terror at admitting to the number of bastard children her father had sired over the decades, she waved it it away. “Never mind. I’m sure that can be tested.” She looked at Charles. “Be aware that if my father’s current mate finds out about her, she will try to kill her.”
Charles inclined his head as his mate opened the car door with an eagerness that was palpable. “I’m sure I can handle that,” he said.
Leah was sure, too. After Bran, Charles was the most dangerous werewolf in the world, even more than the psychopath Chastel had been purely because Charles wasn’t a psychopath.
Leah glanced once more at her mate, thankful for a neat solution to this hideous problem, and then went back inside.
*
Leah made a decision on the wedding dress, deciding that the lace dress would work. With Susannah’s help, she navigated Amazon for the tape that would hold her in place as lingerie apparently was out of the question. Susannah also suggested some practical minor adjustments to the dress – adding an extra button to the base of the low back so that Leah could wear a pair of nude panties and hemming it by an inch once they had agreed on her shoes.
She packaged up the other dresses and would take them to the post office the next day to return them.
Bran, not unexpectedly, came to her room that night. He crawled over her, kissed her, took his time with her, and then broached the subject he had no doubt really come to speak to her about. He was a master at ensuring she was pliable. “Are you sure about the child?”
“Children die,” she said, opening her eyes to look at him. He knew this more than most.
They were lying on their fronts, heads turned to each other. Most of the decorative pillows that he hated had been tossed to the floor. Bran tapped his fingers on the mattress between them. “I would point out that a higher percentage of your father’s children take the Change than most.”
She closed her eyes, because she didn’t want to see his face when he answered her next question. “Bran, do you want the child?”
He stayed silent for a long moment. “I am wondering if it might be good for… us.”
‘Us’? She opened her eyes again, surprised. He was expressionless, allowing her to interpret his words whichever way she wanted.
Slowly, she raised herself onto her elbows and stared at her padded headboard, sifting through her shifting thoughts. The flash of anger – rage – at him for not answering her question but also laying the responsibility of their damaged relationship on a third party. The conflicting instincts she had towards children as a whole. “I don’t know,” she said, eventually, honestly.
She would not be able to leave him if she had a child with him. Perhaps he knew that. And, before, a child had always been competition for his time and attention. Since Mercedes, she had known she would never win that battle and felt like she had come to terms with it, even if it had been the hardest lesson she had ever had to learn.
Leah thought, too, that the child would grow to love him more, even if she put in the majority of the parenting, as she inevitably would. He talked disdainfully about her old-fashioned attitudes but it was she who managed the house, the cooking, the cleaning, who dealt with the domestic duties of the Aspen Creek Pack. And ultimately her maternal instincts were usually more about survival than about affection, if she had those instincts at all, which she questioned.
“She would be in our lives, regardless,” Bran added. She began to feel he was regretting bringing it up.
She lay back down and turned her head away from him, hurt, as always. They had long agreed that the best way forward was to be honest. She found herself occasionally wishing he would lie. A white lie or two, was that too much to ask? “That’s true.”
They drifted into silence, both thinking their separate thoughts. Then, “What was he thinking?”
Leah grunted. “It’s just a coincidence, Bran. The invitation will have arrived at the same time as the problem developed.”
She’d had little interaction with her family, by design. They did not live in America, couldn’t – that would mean obeying Bran and her father would never. He might privately recognise Bran as his superior in power and influence but towing the line? Absolutely out of the question. Returning to Europe would be too much effort, too much change, and he had been far too lazy to spend his days fighting off Chastel. Instead, when Leah had married Bran, he and his pack had relocated to South America, hopping from a variety of properties that he owned, living life as a king. She suspected his moneymaking schemes were all utterly illegal, as well.
Bran moved and brushed his hand down her back. “The dress was nice,” he said.
Since compliments were few and far between, she turned her head back to him. “Thank you. That’s not the one I’m wearing. I think I’m supposed to keep it a surprise, anyway.”
“You should.” His eyes warmed perceptibly and he telegraphed his intent as he leaned over again. He kissed her luxuriously, slowly, pushing all other thoughts from her mind. She rolled onto her back.
*
Leah returned to screaming. No, wailing, she amended, coming in from a run, wearing sweats she’d picked up from the motel. The noise was coming from Bran’s study so she immediately started up the stairs, intending to shower – she smelled strongly of her wolf.
“Leah?” Bran said from his study, knowing that despite the wailing she would hear him.
She froze on the bottom step. Usually, he wouldn’t acknowledge her return home unless he wanted something. “Yes?”
“Could you come here?”
This was undoubtedly not going to be good, she thought. By all accounts, the child – Grace – was not living up to her name but was instead living up to family tradition by being a nightmare. From what she had heard, she didn’t sleep, eat or stop wailing.
Anna, red-eyed, was sitting in front of her mate’s desk, the child on the floor at her feet, despairingly weeping. Apparently being an Omega wasn’t the miracle cure-all everyone thought it was, Leah thought bitterly. Bran’s office stank of the anxiety that was emanating from Anna. It was uncomfortable.
She smiled at Bran. “Yes?”
“Could you take Grace for a few minutes so I can speak to Anna?”
Leah allowed her face to visibly drop. “Must I?”
Brace gave her a look that brokered no argument.
“Fine.” She scooped the child up – she was as light as a feather – and left the study. She winced at the noise. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that there was anything she could do to make it stop, so she carried the baby through the house and opened the sliding glass doors that led out into the back yard.
Plonking the baby down onto the grass, Leah went to sit on the picnic bench and watched her probably-half-sister from a safe few yards away.
The crying continued. Large, fat tears dropped from big, blue eyes. She really was devastated, Leah thought. She wondered how she had been removed from her mother, who was undoubtedly dead. Did children remember their mothers when they weren’t even walking age?
Grace rolled onto her chubby little hands and knees and started crawling, still crying, towards Leah. When she reached Leah’s bare feet, she sat back on her diapered bottom, looked up, and continued her theme.
“You must be exhausted,” Leah told her. Anna had certainly looked it; she imagined motherhood wasn’t everything Anna had dreamed.
The baby waved her chubby arms in the air. Even Leah wasn’t hard-hearted enough to ignore this. She picked her up and spun her around on her lap so she was wailing outward, instead of into Leah’s chest. She jiggled her knees. “Yes, I imagine you’ve had a traumatising few months,” she said, assessing the back yard. She’d had people working on the garden, tidying the borders, clearing the paths, ready for the wedding of the century. She thought her lilies might open in a timely fashion, too. “I can appreciate that.”
Grace sobbed, sucking in great lungsful of air. Leah patted her back, absently.
“You really are much better off. My father liked his children to fight each other to the death,” she advised her. “That’s if the new bitch allowed you to live. Which she probably wouldn’t and is why you’re here in the first place.”
She wondered what Bran was talking to Anna about. Presumably the baby because it was all they seemed to talk about at the moment. How was the baby. Was the baby sleeping. Was the baby healthy. She would have thought Anna would have spoken to her own father about child rearing. What did Bran know? From her own observation, he’d barely had a hand raising Charles and had palmed the last baby presented to them off on a human woman and her werewolf husband, claiming to everyone that Leah was the issue.
Leah rotated on the picnic bench so she could admire the side of the house. They would be using the decking, which was covered, for the buffet and drinks. The wood had been re-sanded and re-varnished. The rest of the decoration would be flowers – white and yellow – in garlands and vases and there would be strings of fairy lights for the evening.
Grace squirmed, impatiently, apparently bored with this view. Leah picked her up and held her so her little feet were pressed into her thighs and she was standing up. She raised her eyebrows at her half-sister. “Better?” she asked.
Grace had shoved her hand into her mouth, drooling profusely, which had effectively stopped her from wailing quite so much. She was just whimpering now. Perhaps they should get her one of those sucking things humans put in their children’s mouths. It had seemed an anathema to Leah because the young made noises to communicate but she could appreciate if your child only communicated by screaming that would be tedious.
The resemblance between them was unfortunately quite strong, Leah thought, critically assessing her now that they were alone. She was blonde, but then most Caucasian babies were, so that may change as she grew. Her eyes were St. John’s and therefore the same as Leah’s, always appreciably her best feature. She jiggled her legs and, charmingly, Grace smiled around her now wet hand.
“Better, hmm,” Leah said. She leaned forward and gave her a sniff. Babies did smell good, at least, when they weren’t soiling themselves. Grace didn’t yet have her own defined scent, it was too overpowered by the adults who toted her around, of the lotions and potions that kept babies healthy. Mostly sour milk, she thought.
She heard a noise and snapped her head around, staring into the trees. By the tread, it was a wolf and there was only one wolf who liked to play in Bran’s immediate territory, a game of sorts. He would circle the house at odd hours, marking his route with his scent. She narrowed her eyes. It annoyed Bran, in a base, territorial way which, in turn, annoyed him more. Bran liked to pretend he could rise above the behaviours that were instilled instinctively by their werewolf others and she knew it took a great deal of effort on his part not to stomp out into the undergrowth and piss on the bushes himself.
It made her chuckle.
“Asil,” she said. “Would you like to meet my baby sister?”
*
“Gently,” Leah said reflexively, as Grace stretched wet fingers towards Asil’s fur.
Asil vibrated with irritation. He had been forced to obey Leah, because she was the Marrok’s mate and because in wolf form he couldn’t use his patented dislike of her to make her lose her temper and dismiss him. Instead, he had to sit still whilst a baby mauled him, as if he wasn’t the Moor and feared across the world.
Leah’s day had immeasurably improved.
To her surprise, Grace was gentle. Little fingers lightly stroked Asil’s twitching ear, his jaw. The noises she was making were also discernibly different.
“Da-da?” Leah repeated, listening intently.
Grace tilted her head up, a big gummy smile on her face. “Da-da-da-da-da-da,” she said.
Like Leah, her father was an unusual colour – a big, golden wolf with a white belly – so Asil’s colouring couldn’t possibly be mistaken for his. “This is Asil,” Leah said, firmly. “Not your father.”
Obligingly, Asil shuffled forward so that Grace could pet the fur of his neck. “Da-da-da-da,” Grace burbled.
Maybe it was supposed to be dog, she thought. Or maybe she was a baby and was just talking nonsense.
She lowered Grace to the ground, holding her under her armpits. She promptly shoved her face into Asil’s belly and let out a husky giggle around a mouthful of fur. Leah laughed, surprised. “Yes, very funny.”
Asil chuffed and licked the top of Grace’s head. He then slumped down onto the ground himself and rolled onto his side. Leah took this as a sign that she could sit Grace down as well and Asil would be amenable. The baby crawled over to clamber on him. “Gently,” Leah reminded them both.
Resigned, Asil laid his head down and closed his yellow eyes.
*
Bran came out a few minutes later and strolled across the grass to sit next to her on the picnic bench. “I’ve sent Anna home for a nap.”
“I do have other things to do,” Leah said, sharply, not particularly prepared to babysit for the rest of the day.
“I’ll look after her,” Bran replied mildly, probably looking down at where Grace was currently playing with Asil’s tail and thinking there was nothing to it.
She couldn’t help herself; she snorted. “Fine. I’m going to shower.” She stood, brushing down her backside and nodded to Asil. Good behaviour should be recognised. “Asil, thank you for being so patient with her.”
Inside, she showered and then blow-dried her hair smooth, all the while aware that Grace had started screaming again. She wondered what it was. She’d heard Bran attempt to feed her, and also change her diaper, which was an entertaining concept in itself. He’d sung to her, as well, and she had hummed along. Grace had been unmoved. Leah had Googled ‘why do babies cry’ and saw the answers were infinite and, as she suspected, Grace was crying more than was statistically average for her age.
She went downstairs. “Do you want a break?”
“Did you do something to get her to stop?” Bran asked. He was lying on the couch, hoisting Grace above his head. There were drops of liquid on his grey T-shirt from her tears.
“I don’t think so. I just took her outside.” She leaned over and took the baby from him and put her on her hip, walking around the living room. Grace despaired, fisting her hands and thumping Leah’s chest. “We should get her a sucking thing.”
“A pacifier,” Bran corrected, absently, watching them inscrutably. “Anna doesn’t want to use one.”
“Why—oh, never mind, I don’t care. I bet we can get some from Amazon and we can use them without her knowing.” She bounced Grace a little and stared at the photos on their mantle. There were several wolves, real ones. She had a moment of inspiration. “Wait. Why don’t you Change?”
Bran didn’t need much persuasion. He undressed and she felt the slight tug on the pack bonds as he transformed quickly. She had always admired how neat he was.
When he was wolf again, she told him to sit on the couch. She sat next to him and buried Grace between them.
The baby stopped crying and face-planted into Bran’s side.
“Huh,” Leah said.
*
“That is not a long term solution,” Bran whispered, having changed back after Grace had fallen asleep, clutching his fur. He pulled on his sweats and a T-shirt and sat back down, running his fingers through his sandy hair. It was a little long, she thought.
“She’ll probably grow out of it. But maybe we can get her a furry blanket.”
“That’s… very good lateral thinking,” he said, sounding surprised. The bond between them hummed with pleasure.
Leah pulled out her cell. She had, earlier, ordered baby pacifiers as Grace had been entertaining herself by crawling over her mate. Now she scrolled through some options for faux wolf fur blankets, doing as Susannah had shown her and looking for those with the fastest delivery dates. She ordered four, in various sizes and colours. “Maybe you could roll around on them. Make them more authentic. Babies can smell, apparently.”
Bran ran a finger over Grace’s outstretched hand and watched as the fingers reflexively closed on it. His smile was soft and loving. She felt a familiar spike of jealousy and resolutely squashed it. They had done this before and she had learnt, painfully, but she had learnt.
Then he glanced up at her and for the first time saw what it was like to receive the full force of that look from him.
Her heart plummeted. “Excuse me,” she said, getting up with, she thought, remarkable composure.
She hurried upstairs, closed the door of her bedroom and went to sit on the edge of her bed. For a horrifying moment, she thought she was going to cry, felt the tell-tale press of heat behind her eyeballs, the prickling.
It passed, though, and she dropped back onto her bed and stared at the ceiling, daydreaming about leaving him.
*
The day of the wedding, the skies were a cornflower blue and Leah abandoned her wet weather contingency plans. She Changed and took herself off for an early morning run, which she was certain was going to be the only enjoyable part of her day, and returned to find the caterers had been let in and were setting up. She sighed and slunk in through the back, Changing in the garage and finding that someone had not replaced the sweats that were usually kept there for just this reason. All that remained was a distressed men’s T-shirt and not a particularly large one at that.
Rolling her eyes, she pulled this on and tugged it down. The catering company were her preferred one – sourced through extensive trial and error with lesser companies - and she would rather not alienate them by giving them a lewd show.
Naturally, on her journey through the house, it wasn’t the catering team she ran into – it was Bran, entertaining Mercedes and her husband, the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, in the living area with cups of tea.
Leah was not prepared for this moment. Indeed, she had very much hoped she could be wilfully ignorant of Mercy’s presence for the entire day. She had hoped Bran would be sensitive to that, perhaps by not, say, inviting them into their home, so her mate received a frigid glare before she turned her attention to the interloper and her mate.
Adam – who remained one of the most classically attractive man she had ever seen, God only knew what he saw in Mercy - gave her a formal nod, which she returned. “Adam. How good to see you. Mercy,” Leah added, fixing her eyes on a point in the middle of Mercy’s forehead.
“Good run?” Mercy asked, pointedly.
Leah realised she was still clutching the hem of the T-shirt. She was tempted to release it but Bran would not be pleased. It wasn’t human. “Wonderful. If you’ll excuse me,” she said, escaping up the stairs.
It could have gone worse, Leah told herself, resolutely, patting herself on the back. No one died.
*
Tag was giving her away, a tradition she had wanted to do away with but one which Bran had inexplicably requested. It was Bran who suggested Tag for the responsibility. Bran was fond of him and she knew it pleased Tag to have a role in the wedding, even if he wasn’t particularly fond of Leah himself. She didn’t care. It was just another thing she would have to tolerate.
So, in the end, it was Tag who was the first man to see her, waiting as he was in the living room. She smirked, helplessly, because he looked both ridiculous and wonderful in his suit and she couldn't possibly tell him that.
Tag’s mouth dropped open, quite flatteringly, as he gazed at her. “Leah, you look…”
It had been a long, long time since she had been complimented with such genuine appreciation. She blushed, unexpectedly, and reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears, only to remember she had laboriously curled it and put it up on top of her head. “Thank you.”
Anna came in through the doors, carrying the bouquet. She was dressed charmingly in yellow. She, too, smiled at Leah, though the dress was no surprise to her as she had helped do up the buttons at the back. “You look beautiful, Leah.” In another unexpected moment, she kissed Leah’s cheek. “Everything is ready. Everyone’s seated. Shall we go?”
Tag offered her his arm, chest puffed. She took it. “Let’s get this over with.”
*
Leah didn’t get nervous. She’d seen too much, done too much for that to be a problem. Still, when she looked back she couldn’t recall much of the actual ceremony. Samuel had officiated and he had done so without ridiculing her, which made a change. She got through love, honour and obey and then used the same tactic as she had done with Mercy and stared a hole in Bran’s forehead whilst he said whatever it was that he said, letting the sounds of the collective heartbeats, breathing and someone’s digestive tract blur out any of his words. She remembered the ring being placed on her finger; it had felt heavy but warm from being held in Bran’s hand.
Then he kissed her, for a little too long, she thought, and there was some cheering and some rice – strange custom – and then she was handed a glass of sparkling elderflower wine.
She wished, not for the first time, that she could get drunk.
It was very strange to have so many werewolves on their land. She wasn’t involved particularly in the business of being the Marrok so she only knew the men and women invited to her second wedding through Bran’s anecdotes. So she knew of Phillipe, the philanderer, and his long-suffering human mate, and expected to dislike him and didn’t. There was Angus, significantly smaller than she was expecting based on the booming phone calls she’d had, on occasion, taken from him. She escaped him quite quickly. She spent time with the Alpha from California, from New York, from Utah, then found herself in front of her daughter-in-law.
“Leah, she’s clean, would you mind taking her for a moment?” Anna asked, thrusting Grace at her, trusting that Leah wouldn’t say no. “I haven’t eaten anything since last night and I’m starving.”
Grace was snuggling a snippet of her fur blanket and sucking her thumb. Leah frowned. “The pacifier would be better than this,” she said, taking her little sister and tucking her into her hip.
Anna had dressed her in a tiny yellow dress to match her own. She looked a little like a sunflower, with her fluffy blonde hair. Leah stroked a hand over a particularly ferocious tuft, attempting to tidy it. A camera went off, making her jump, and Leah had to grit her teeth. The professional photographer had been at Bran’s request too. She had agreed only on the grounds that there would be no staged photographs. She planned to ignore him as much as possible.
“I know,” Anna sighed, rapidly popping food into her mouth.
“Take your time,” Leah advised, seeing this opportunity as a break for herself from smiling and making small talk. The baby smelled sweet and felt good in her arms. It was a very simple thing, uncomplicated, a feature of child-rearing she had not considered before.
She swayed from side to side, looking around, assessing. “I think people are enjoying themselves.” She couldn’t have given more of a damn about the outsiders, she was specifically looking at their pack. Everyone was eating, drinking, talking. There was a lot of laughter. Through the pack bonds, there was a chorus of contentment.
“So much. It’s really nice. Have you spoken to Michel? I know he was keen to catch up. I didn’t know you knew each other.”
“Not yet. We grew up together, in a way. Oh, no, thank you, sweetheart, you can keep that,” she said, flinching back when Grace thrust a particularly moist bit of blanket to her face.
Anna smiled but it was a little tremulous. “You’re so good with her.”
“I think she can tell I’m related to her,” Leah said honestly. It was the only rational explanation.
Her daughter-in-law swallowed something particularly hard and looked down at her plate. “Bran says it’s because she doesn’t make you anxious.”
Leah was moved to be kind or, at least, her version of kind. “All first time mothers are anxious.” She took a breath and forced out another sentimental comment, “You’re doing fine.”
Anna poked at a canapé, silently. Leah didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t good at this sort of thing. She thought about the time they had turned on the sprinklers after the pack had ruined their musical evening and Anna’s mischievous, pixie face. It had been the first time she thought Anna might be more worthwhile than just for her particular brand of magic. “It will get better,” she said, confidently. “She’s not crying all the time, at least.”
“She almost slept through the whole night last week.”
Leah, who liked her sleep, winced. “Oh god.”
This made Anna laugh. “Yeah, you’d hate it. Bran keeps offering to take her for a night, you know.”
“He’s more than welcome to. I’ll go sleep at the motel, however.” Leah lifted Grace into the air and pulled a face at her, knowing it would get her a gummy smile. A camera went off again. She suspected she might soon be shoving the camera somewhere the photographer might find difficult to remove.
Before she could ask him to move on, Charles appeared and put his arm around Anna’s waist. He smiled, affectionately, at Leah because she was holding his child. Cornicks were saps for children, Leah mused.
“Here,” she said, not prepared to be part of a domestic scene any longer now that it included her mate’s son. She held Grace to her father, who took her. “I should mingle.”
*
She found Michel or, rather, he found her. He kissed her on each cheek, dark hair brushing her face.
“You look sensational,” he told her, the compliment even more so said with a French accent and the warm expression in his grey eyes.
Leah had known Michel for a long time, longer than she had known Bran, as for a while he had been placed with her father’s pack when he was newly Changed. He had survived Chastel through sheer pig-headedness but she thought he was looking weary. She looped her arm through his and they walked away, towards the trees, giving them an illusion of privacy.
“Would you mind?” he asked, switching to French. “The jetlag makes it harder.”
She shook her head. “It’s good to practice,” she said, finding it initially a struggle to bring the language front of mind. “How have you been?”
“Ah, fine, fine.” He patted her hand. “You know how it is. Nothing is settled in Europe with him gone. It's all territorial moves. I almost miss him; he was not so much trouble if you know how to handle him.”
The same could be said of most old wolves. She squeezed his arm. “We always knew someone would eventually kill him.”
Michel snorted. They stopped in front of a moss-covered statue. He pondered it. “Is this--?”
“Very ugly?” she suggested. She was the one who had allowed it to grow moss in the hopes that its squat little face would be concealed.
“It’s, what is it, a large frog?”
“Yes. I think Bran won it in a raffle.” She tugged him along. “Let me show you my lilies.” They, at least, were very beautiful and her pride and joy. She had a rigorous lily beetle defence and even as she surveyed their fiery glory with satisfaction, she was on the look out for the little red pests, fully prepared to crush them between her fingers whilst wearing her wedding dress.
“Your husband is watching us quite intently, you know,” Michel murmured, without turning around. It was possible that Bran wouldn’t be able to hear them now, above the noise of the band and the chattering crowd.
Leah bent over to inspect one of her plants. “Talking of spouses, how’s Toni?” she asked.
“Perfection. She was sorry she couldn’t come.”
Toni was tolerable and only because they both knew, in a fight, Leah could take her down with ease and because Michel rarely let them meet. “I can’t believe you have a grandchild,” she admitted, standing and facing him. She liked to remember Michel as, well, not a boy perhaps, but a young werewolf, with all the awkwardness that came with that.
“And you? I saw you with the cherub. A pretty picture you made.”
“Not my grandchild. Technically my half-sister.”
This made Michel chuckle, then chuckle some more. “That bastard. Isn’t his latest mate particularly ferocious?”
“Bloodthirsty, like they always are.” Her father had a type. She shoved him, lightly. “It’s not funny, Michel. He sent her here as a wedding gift.”
Michel properly hooted this time, half folding over. Leah saw a few heads turn to look. “He is incorrigible, I agree, but you have to appreciate his balls. Sending his bastard to the Marrok. Imagine.”
Leah found she didn’t much like Grace being referred to as a ‘bastard’ by others. This was intriguing. “Well, it backfired. Now that we know for sure the mother is dead, Charles and Anna have adopted her, which I guess makes for some strange familial relationships.”
It was nice, in a way, to have something of her blood in the tight-knit Cornick family now.
He took her arm again and they meandered back to the main crowd. She couldn’t see Bran anywhere and hoped he wasn’t with Mercy. “Let me introduce you to some people,” she said.
*
Truth be told, she hadn’t much considered the after of the wedding. If it had just been their pack, likely they would have all gone for a run but with too many Alphas, too many egos, that wasn’t going to be possible. It would just lead to a bloodbath. Instead, she had the caterers serve more food at 6pm – big, buffet style - and by midnight most of the guests had left. Once she had paid the caterers, Leah had laid out the last of the canapés on platters for the remaining hungry crowd herself.
Bran was holding court in front of an enraptured audience in their living room – including his entire family, as well as Mercedes and her mate, which left a sour taste in her mouth. Leah busied herself in the kitchen, listening to them tell stories. Whether it was on purpose, or a reflection of the sheer number of times she had pissed people off, many of the stories were lightly degrading towards Leah. Nothing major, because Bran did really take exception to criticism to his face, just the odd comment. A pot luck where she had thrown out one of the female’s dishes because she had annoyed her. This was followed by hilarious laughter, then a few more examples of when she had been malicious towards women in their pack. After an interval, Samuel told a story from the first time he had met Leah, about all her hand-made shoes, painting her as frivolous. This led to a recounting of the mystery of the shoes that Mercy had stolen when she was a child and much teasing of Mercy to get the truth.
It was a low-grade irritation, on the scale of things. She took her time slicing up up the tier of the wedding cake she’d had the caterers set aside so she could give some to the wildlings the next day – making sure to label the container with a big DO NOT EAT – WILDLINGS CAKE sign. After this, she gave the counters a final wipe down, she pulled a beer from the fridge and popped the cap, taking a gulp of the cold liquid, debating how she could sneak past everyone to go to bed. She longed for the soundproofed quiet of her bedroom.
Michel came into the kitchen carrying his near-empty wine glass. He had a look of intense annoyance on his face and he closed the door behind him. He came to sit on the stool next to her, leaning his elbows on the island. “Is it always like that?” he asked, softly, in French.
She didn’t reply; it wasn’t worth it and though she was tempted to complain about them where they could hear them it would only make Bran angry.
“Where are you staying?” She narrowed her eyes, trying to recall the spreadsheet she had compiled. There were limited places in Aspen Creek where they could house so many people but she had made a few her priority, putting them up in the motel or in spare rooms. The rest she had dotted out in other motels an hour or so away.
“In the motel.”
“Shall I walk you back?” Leah asked, inspired, suddenly. They could leave through the back and then when she returned she could probably slide through the front door and get up the stairs without anyone noticing too much.
Michel looked thoughtfully at her dress and her now bare feet. “In that?”
“It’s fine,” she said, hopping off her stool. There were boots in the garage that she used for gardening which would keep the hem of her dress off the road.
He followed her out the back, watched her put on the chunky boots with a very European smirk, she thought. “Should I say goodnight to the Marrok?”
“He won’t notice,” she said, which wasn’t true. He’d notice, he just wouldn’t care. “Beside, you’re a guest of the bride and it’s my special day.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him, which he laughed at.
“I considered telling some stories of my own,” Michel said, as they tramped down the gravel towards the road that would take them down to the motel. “When your father took you to France to meet Chastel, when you were fourteen.”
“God, I’d forgotten about that.” That had not gone well.
“Or perhaps about how your mother starved you so you would fit into all the nice dresses the way she wanted.”
“She was a big fan of lemon and hot water.” Consequentially, Leah had never been able to stomach lemonade. Whilst beautiful, she had always been too tall and her mother’s tactic to make Leah more socially suitable – ergo, smaller – was to ensure that she was rail thin. When she had been Changed, she had been surprised to discover she had hips and a bust. “And it was a very long time ago,” she added. She wasn’t to be pitied. “All the stories they told were true. I am a petty bitch.”
Michel was still annoyed. “They don’t do you justice.”
“Thank you for saying that. I’m glad you were able to come.” Perhaps because he was in the unique position to have known her both before and after her Change, Michel was one of the few who had ever taken the time to know her better and see some of the good things. He could be very kind. She had heard her father say that Michel was weak for that and, once, she may have been of the same opinion. But he had been Alpha of the French pack now for nearly a century and he knew when to kill, too. She had witnessed that first hand.
She took his arm and took a deep, refreshing breath of the night air. Though she was tired, it was good to be back outside, under the great expanse of sky, hearing all the night creatures scurrying and trotting through the undergrowth. Life continued as normal. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful here?” she said, changing the subject. She thought Aspen Creek was the most beautiful place in the world.
“Yes, it’s very… big,” he said, gesturing with his free hand. “Very American.”
She snorted. “Tell me what’s going on in Europe. Who are the big players?”
“Libor, of course. The Russians. That old man in Northern Europe.”
Through her father, Leah had once known all the 'old men' of Europe. “Bergen? I thought he never left the mountains?” she asked.
“Not so much any more. He has been making moves, drawing all the Scandinavian packs under his aegis, making his way south.” Michel grunted. “I have told the Marrok.”
“There are so many to keep track of,” Leah mused. She knew this was a frustration for Bran, who wanted things to settle. Still. It was better than Chastel. To say he had been a rapist, would be to put it mildly. A homicidal sadist. A cannibal. Her father had thought him powerful and had been prepared to sacrifice her for a union with such a man.
They took the turning onto the main road. The motel sign was lit up, in the distance.
“I think this is far enough,” Michel said, suddenly, pulling her to a halt. “A bride shouldn’t be away from her husband on her wedding night, particularly not with another man.”
She tugged him forward, determined to at least see him to his door, but he resisted. “He really doesn’t care, Michel.”
Michel turned her in his arms and took her hand in his, lifting it to his lips to kiss it. He was smiling. “My dear, a man doesn’t re-marry, in public, a woman he doesn’t care about.”
“It was for…” She stopped. It would sound ridiculous, saying it out loud, but still she said it. “The pack has had a rough few months. We thought it would be a reason for a good celebration.”
Michel was not convinced. “And the North American Alphas?”
“Well, he is the Marrok.” Leah bit her bottom lip. Truthfully, she hadn’t considered it further because Bran’s first rationale had been so convincing to her. Everything was for the good pack, for the good of the werewolves. If he thought seeing Bran marry her would give everyone cheer, she had believed him. She did believe him.
She scowled. “Don’t make me doubt myself, Michel.”
“Bah. You are always stubborn. I’m done with you now,” he said, flicking his hands at her. “Go home, make love to your husband.”
“I will then,” she said haughtily.
He smiled at her, not fooled. “A bientot, Leah.”
*
There was no need for her to sneak into the house because everyone had gone. She closed the door to her silent home and breathed a sigh of relief. She unlaced the heavy boots and kicked them off, then reached up to start taking the pins from her hair as she wandered into the living area. Someone had tidied up, probably Bran. The place stunk of strangers, however, and the scent of Mercedes and all that brought with her. She went to open the sliding doors, leaving the screens down to prevent the inevitable insect invasion, and then made her way upstairs.
A glance in the travel cot unnecessarily showed that it was empty. There was a scrap of fur blanket, delightfully moist, that Leah picked up with two fingers and stowed on her chest of drawers for hand-washing tomorrow. She heard Bran in his room next door and finished unpinning her hair, tossing the twenty-three pins that had been her torment into the dish that stored them.
He came to lean in the doorway, wearing just his slacks and his hands folded behind his back. “Good night?” he asked.
She was momentarily swayed by how good he looked, half-dressed, the definition of his upper arms, the muscles of his abdomen and the cuts of his hipbones. She felt herself lean towards him, helplessly. “Can you unbutton me?”
Bran's smile was broad, a flash of white teeth, a little predatory. He pushed off the door jamb and stalked towards her. “I would be delighted to.”
She smiled, because this was an area she knew and understood, and presented her back to him, moving her hair aside. There were some tricky buttons at the top and then at the base of her spine. She wasn’t unduly surprised when he kissed her nape as he undid them. She leaned back.
“You looked beautiful, today,” he said, a whisper of breath sending shivers down her back.
Leah closed her eyes. “Thank you. You looked very handsome.”
Carefully, he peeled her dress from her body, stepping around her to investigate the tape that was holding her in place. “Clever,” he said, carefully peeling it from her skin. Even that, to Leah, felt vaguely erotic.
She stepped out of the pool of the skirt, naked but for the small pair of skin-toned panties. As he started kissing her neck, she reached down to undo the buttons of his slacks. Bran slid his hands up her sides to cup her breasts, rubbing his thumbs over the red marks from the pull of the tape.
He kicked his pants away and lifted his head to look at her. She could see herself reflected in his eyes. “I have a present for you,” he said, reaching up to cup her face.
For the briefest, unlikeliest of moments, she thought he was going to make a smutty joke. Then she realised he was holding something between his fingers, something that sparkled. She took the ring from him. “For me?” she said, twisting it from side to side so the stones caught the light. An eternity ring, she thought. That’s what this type of ring was called.
Thoughtfully, she slid it onto the finger with the new wedding ring and held it out. She would have to take care not to lose either of them. The risk with jewellery was that she Changed and forgot. “It’s lovely.” She looked back at him, showing him her surprise. She could count on one hand the number of presents he had ever spontaneously bought her and wondered why he had done so now. He wasn't normally so extravagant, either. “Thank you,” she said, meaningfully.
“You’re welcome.” He kissed her again, languidly, cupping her face in her hands gently, exploring her mouth. Not a kiss that was a preface to sex but a kiss that was for the kiss’s sake. It felt perilously romantic. She sighed into him, pressing close, enjoying the play of their lips and tongues, his hair in her hands, his fingers trailing down her back. They knew each other’s bodies well, perhaps too well, but this felt different. Somehow.
He lifted her up and carried her to bed.
*
Leah woke surprisingly early, given how energetically Bran had kept her from getting any rest. He was still fast asleep, face smashed into a pillow and not even her getting out of bed disturbed him when normally the slightest sound woke him. She made her way downstairs, wincing, feeling muscles complaining. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and snorted, half-heartedly patted her hair down.
She made a mug of tea for Bran and a coffee for herself and went back to her bedroom. His eyes opened when she put the mug down on the table on his side of the bed. “Morning,” he said, sleepily, rolling onto his back.
“Morning.” She began the laborious process of running a comb through her tangled, wild hair, looking out of the window whilst she did so. The sky was cloudier today. They had been lucky with the weather. She felt a faint sense of satisfaction over something of which she had no control
“I would like to start again,” Bran said, voice rough with sleep and other things.
She looked over at him, feeling soft and comfortable with him, as she often was when they had spent the night together so thoroughly. Very thoroughly, she thought, drifting back to bed and propping herself up on pillows she plucked from the floor. “Start what?” She sipped her coffee.
“Us. I would like to start us again.”
Leah wasn’t sure she understood what she was hearing. “Your sentence doesn’t make sense to me.”
He sighed and put his tea down and took her coffee from her as well. She found herself being rearranged into his arms, cuddled. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest. It was an unusual display of affection. “I am very stubborn and very old. And selfish,” he added. “Despite all this, you love me.”
“That’s true,” she told his chest, glad she couldn’t see his face, nor him hers. Her face was burning.
“And you are stubborn and aggressively competitive and are deeply paranoid. But you are loyal and you put our pack first and you care about everyone in your own way. You inexplicably think everyone wants me which I can only take as deeply flattering, if utterly untrue.” He sighed and stroked her hair. “You put wedding cake aside for the wildlings, Leah.”
She squirmed, uncomfortable – or at least, unfamiliar – with praise from him, even mixed as it was with a dissection of her personality. “Everyone likes cake,” she muttered. That was a thing she was going to have to do today, before it went stale.
“I made a mistake; I thought you’d like the idea of a wedding. I thought you’d like it if we stood in front of an audience and made promises to each other.”
She made a dismissive noise and this time squirmed more thoroughly, attempting to get out of his arms. This was getting ridiculous now. She didn’t know where he was going with this, but she didn’t like it. “Bran, it was a sham. I made promises. You—you can’t make those promises. We both know that. Will you let me go, please?”
He pinned her to the bed, effortlessly. His eyes were narrowed. “You literally didn’t hear me, did you? I did wonder. What did you do? Start reciting the National Anthem in your head?”
She had once – decades ago – told him that when she was particularly bored during pack meetings she would use this as one of the ways to either stay awake or look engaged. “There was a lot going on,” she said, recognising that admitting she hadn’t been paying attention on her wedding day, sham though it was, didn’t show her in the best light.
Leah twisted again and escaped him and he rolled onto his front, defeated. “I know I only have myself to blame for this,” he said to the mattress.
“Yes! Probably! What did you promise me, then?” she demanded, now she could stand up and physically feel she had the upper hand. “I would imagine obeying was out of the question.”
Bran pushed himself up, crawled to the edge of the mattress and sat up on his knees so he could face her. “Utterly out of the question,” he said, baring his teeth. “I promised I would love, honour and defend you.”
Leah waited for the tell-tale alert that accompanied a lie of this magnitude from him. When it didn’t come, she narrowed her eyes, staring into his hazel eyes, the pupils mere pinpricks against the light from the windows behind her. “Say that again.”
“I, Bran Cornick,” he said, crossly, “promise you, Leah Cornick, that I will love you, I will honour you and I will defend you, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, for as long as we both shall live.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Really,” she said. "All that."
“Really,” he replied. He raised his eyebrows, expectantly.
“You love me,” she repeated, just to be sure.
“Yes, I love you.”
She waited, waited for the words to sink in. For everything to change. For it to be different, better, life-changing.
Bran loved her – just as she always wanted. The look in his eyes, that was for her.
“Huh,” she said, turning to sit on the bed. He unfolded his legs to sit next to her and they sat there quietly for a few minutes. Damn Charles for being right, she thought. After a while, she said, thoughtfully, “Probably, we didn’t need to have a wedding for you to say that.”
“I thought it gave it ceremony.”
He did like ceremony. It was very Bran. “I would have enjoyed the wedding itself more if I’d known beforehand it wasn’t just for tax reasons, then.” But because he loved her and he wanted everyone to know it. His sons knew it. The pack knew it. Mercedes knew it. Ha!
“In retrospect, I can see that.”
“It’s nice,” Leah decided, eventually. And she gave him a smile. “It’s very nice.”
He smiled back, boyishly. “I’m glad. So? Do you think we can start over?
"I'd like that," she said, even though she didn't know what that meant. Yet.
"And, perhaps, and this is something I'm more than willing to discuss," he said, scratching his neck, "Perhaps, you could stop extensively planning how you’re going to leave me now?”
Leah jumped off the bed. "I'll certainly consider it, Bran. Come and shower, we have a busy day ahead."