“But just so you know,” Creed tugged her down until they were chest to chest and her head tucked into the crook of his neck. “I plan to exceed your expectations for the rest of my life,” Creed said with a seriousness that wasn’t part of his sunny nature.
Rou came to nestle with them.
“What if I prefer you go away?” She laced her fingers with his. “Maybe I’ll be done with you?”
“Since you’re precious to me, I’d just have to go away and lick my wounds.” He chuckled as he dropped a kiss into her hair. “I mean, our families are tight, so I’d be at the same places when we’re gathering for celebrations and times of grief. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have the fortitude to keep my distance.” He laced their fingers and brought the back of her hand to his lips. “I’m safe. You’re safe around me. Listen, Auralia,” He shifted until she tipped her chin up to look at him. “I know that relationships past have been casting shadows over us, from your side and mine. But I will never put your safety second. If we’re together or we’re not, you’re safe. I live up to my word. It’s howI got my name from the jump. It's who I am, who I’ve been, who I plan to be. Our telling Gator this morning doesn’t change anything about us. I will stand beside you until you say things aren’t what you want. You are one of my life’s greatest gifts,” he reiterated the sentiment, “and I will treat you as precious always.”
“What if I’m broken like a china plate?” she pouted as she batted her eyes at him, so Creed would know she was teasing—mostly teasing.
“Depends. Is it me you want to help glue you back together, or would you rather I step away and let someone else handle it? I swear to you, you’re safe.” His dark brown eyes had a palpable intensity.
“Not if you’re the one who dropped me in the first place,” she whispered.
“Never, Auralia. Lean on me. Trust me. I will never willingly harm you. That’s my oath. I swear it on my life. I’d die before I hurt you or allowed you to be hurt.”
Those were actual tears in his eyes.Shit.
This was so real, so huge, that the emotions filling her body pressed outward. These were vows deeper than anything said on an altar. These weren’t performative. They were rooted in his soul.
His words were home. The warm humidity bathed over her skin. She closed her eyes and breathed them in, felt them enter her bloodstream and circulate through her body.
Creed didn’t ask what he’d get in return. He never asked her for anything other than to give him a chance to love her.
A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth, and the playfulness fell away.
She slipped lower into his arms, letting her head rest on his chest, where she could hear the steady thrum of his heart.
Auralia would always think of this bed as the altar where they exchanged their true vows. “It feels like we just jumped over the broom,” she whispered.
Creed lifted her chin, and she found his face lit with joy, but the kiss that followed felt like they were tempting fate.
Chapter Two
Creed
Rougarou was a ragdoll of a dog. Floppy and gangly at eighteen months, she was about as tall as she was going to get; she simply hadn’t caught up yet with muscles and coordination.
Petite for a lab, Creed took her size as a bonus, because Rou had passed the assessment for urban search and rescue with flying colors, the type of rescue needed in disaster situations where buildings collapsed, potentially with people inside.
For this, being small and limber was a bonus.
It was a fact that the biggest thing about Rou was her heart.
At Cerberus, Rou had a doggy mentor, Truffles, who was part of Team Bravo. A butterscotch-colored lab, Truffles, wasn’t comfortable in wide open spaces. She got anxious in the woods and fields. Truffles was a burrowing dog who liked tight, dark puzzles; the more complex the maze, the more eager she was to solve them. Showing no fear in collapsed buildings and natural disaster piles, Truffles climbed and wriggled her way through her job of finding people trapped in the crush.
Truffles became nationally famous when a U.S. senator, a member of her security team, and Remi Taleb, Auralia’s mentor, had found themselves trapped in a Lebanese blast.
In that rescue, on the other side of the world, Creed had one degree of separation with almost every single American player: Auralia had just taken up a new place in his heart, he knew Cerberus Bravo and their K9s from a cookout he’d attended with Gator and fellow Marine Raider Deep Del Toro, and Creed had been on assignment the month before with DeltaForce Echo, the same team that had been safeguarding the senator during that disaster.
Those kinds of connections made Creed sit up and pay attention.
Folks say it’s a small world, but the truth of it? The world, in every measurable way, was expansive. What was small was the magnetic energy source that pulled certain folks together into the same sphere.
Creed remembered reading the news article, seeing the players involved, and leaning down to lift the skirt on his sofa to look under where Rou liked to hide. “Rourou, I bet you’d be a good fit for a job like the one Truffles does. What do you think? Should we talk to Gator and see if there’s a place for us over on Cerberus?”
Rou responded by wagging her tail so hard her whole body jiggled.
Of course, Rou had just been weaned from her mom, so Creed took her puppy enthusiasm with a grain of salt. Not every K9 had the right constitution to be a working dog.
