It was impossible to miss the surprise in her voice.
“Yes, about all of it,” Iris said, lifting her chin. She only wavered a little when she got to where they were fudging the truth. “He understands that I’m not that person anymore.”
Blake said, “No, she’s quite different now. We’re all very proud of Iris.”
It made Keith bristle. It was ridiculous, the way Blake talked about her, like she was some screw-up who’d finally gotten her life together. He couldn’t fathom how Blake could like his warm, funny sister-in-law better as the miserable, closed-off, self-conscious woman Keith had first seen in the Council’s photograph.
Heachedto tell Blake off for it, but he knew Iris wouldn’t want him to.
Once again, he made himself smile. “I do think I understand her. After all—”
After all, we’re mates. That was what he’d been about to say, but they hadn’t decided they were telling people yet.
He shot Iris a look that she clearly understood.
Her cheeks darkened in a blush, but she said, in a low but sure voice, “I think we can tell them. We’re sure of everything.”
That at least drowned out his need to dress Blake down for dismissing the real Iris. Now he just wanted to sweep her up into his arms.
She was right. Theyweresure. There was no longer any reason to hide the fact that they were made for each other.
“Tell us what?” Seraphina said.
“We aren’t just matches,” Keith said, luxuriating in the chance to say it out loud. “We’re mates.”
Seraphina dropped her fork.
“You’re mates.”
“Yes,” Iris said. She gave Keith a starry-eyed look he hoped was genuine.
“If you’re mates,” Blake said slowly, “then you must have recognized that the moment you met. Why would you possibly need to take a week before the wedding?”
Great, that brought them smack up against a lot Keith couldn’t really explain without giving everything away. Why couldn’t Blake just let this go?
Keith couldn’t just announce at the dinner table that the real reason for the delay was that he’d known Iris was afraid, not when the reason she was afraid was because she’d worried that he was exactly the kind of person he was pretending to be tonight. He couldn’t say that they were both happy and relieved to find out that neither of them wanted to live up to this act forever.
That was basically the exact opposite of what Iris had asked him to do this evening.
He scrambled. “Like I said, my team—”
“But your team is made up of shifters,” Blake said. His voice was louder now. “Shifters would understand about true mates.”
That ... was completely true and something that he hadn’t thought about.
He said weakly, “Even then, a lot of shifters don’t marry their true mates right away.”
Which was true. Logan and Iz still weren’t married, though part of that was because Iz’s wedding plans were so elaborate that the date kept receding into the future.
But that wasn’t much of an explanation. If his team could hypothetically understand him marrying someone whowasn’this mate after only a week, there was no way they wouldn’t be able to understand marrying his mate even sooner than that.
They really hadn’t thought this through.
It’s a good thing I’m on the right side of the law, because tonight’s showing that I’d make a lousy criminal.
Keith hadn’t imagined needing to explain the situation to anyone but his team, and he could tell them the truth. He’d completely overlooked how the revelation that they were mates would change the village’s reaction to their odd delay. And if Lady Marianne found out ....
Social skills weren’t his forte. Like he’d told Iris—even if she hadn’t believed him—he wasn’t good at talking to people. He was half-tempted to say, “I was just joking!” and then deal with the fallout fromthatinstead.
