"Logan!" He waves me over. "Perfect timing. Mrs. Patterson here was just telling me about the time Emma tried to braid her cat's fur for a school project."
I deliver the programs to the guest reception table, where they look exactly like they were supposed to be there all along instead of being emergency replacements created by small-town miracle workers.
My phone rings. Xavier this time.
"Maria just arrived with enough flowers to decorate the entire resort," he reports. "She's setting up cocktail arrangements now, and the ceremony flowers from the original florist actually look better than expected. Apparently freezing made the colors more vibrant."
"Of course it did," I say, because at this point I'm not even surprised that our emergency solutions are turning out better than the original plans.
Emma finds me near the kitchen, looking frazzled but no longer on the verge of a complete breakdown.
"I don't know how you guys did it," she says, "but Savannah went from stress-eating dinner rolls and muttering about arson to actually smiling. She's upstairs getting ready instead of running around with that tablet trying to solve everyone's problems."
“What are you doing down here?” I ask. Thinking the bride should be upstairs getting ready, even if I’m relieved by her words. This is why we did all this. Not just for Emma, though she deserves the perfect wedding. But because when Savannah called asking for help, none of us could stand the idea of letting her down.
“Call it my compulsive nature. I just had to come down and make sure that everything here was fine.”
"Where's the happy chaos now?" I ask, looking around the main hall which has transformed from disaster zone to elegant wedding venue in the span of a few hours.
"Chloe's having a dress crisis, but Jessica and her mom are handling that. Derek's been banished to the groomsmen's area after trying to rearrange the seating chart. The aunties are drunk but contained. And the teenagers are actually being helpful instead of trying to sneak alcohol."
She pauses, looking around the space that we somehow managed to renovate and repair in record time.
"You know what the best part is?" Emma continues. "Savannah stopped looking like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. For the first time all day, she looked like someone who might actually enjoy a wedding instead of just surviving one. Which is more than can be said for my pack."
I nod, grinning despite myself. "Dax, Kai, and Zane were far from relaxed until Griff put on an old football game and got them distracted."
"Well, they're my pack," Emma says with a laugh, "and as long as they end up down the aisle sober, I'm happy!"
Griff appears at my elbow with his phone pressed to his ear and a grin that means he's just closed another impossible deal.
"Backup generator," he announces after hanging up. "Just in case the weather turns and we lose power. Should be here within the hour, along with emergency heating units and enough extension cords to power a small city."
"Were we supposed to worry about the weather?" Emma asks, looking suddenly panicked again.
"Just being prepared," Xavier says, materializing from wherever he's been coordinating flower logistics. "Mountain weather can be unpredictable, and we'd rather have contingencies we don't need than need contingencies we don't have."
The three of us exchange looks over Emma's head. We all saw the weather reports this morning. There's a storm system moving in that could hit later tonight, and while it probably won't affect the ceremony, it's better to be safe than sorry.
“Guys, I need to go back upstairs!”
Before we can respond, Emma’s gliding out of the kitchen.
An hour later, the backup generator is humming quietly in its designated spot, the emergency heaters are strategically positioned, and I've done a final walkthrough to make sure everything is ready for whatever the mountain decides to throw at us.
Griff finds me checking the sound system for the third time.
"You know it's working perfectly, right?" he says, settling into the chair beside me with the kind of satisfied exhaustion that comes from a day well spent.
"Just making sure," I mutter, but really I'm trying to keep my hands busy so I don't spend the next few hours thinking about how good Savannah's going to look in whatever dress she picked for today and how much I'm looking forward to dancing with her later.
"She called us for help," Xavier observes, appearing with his usual quiet timing. "Because that's what packs do."
"Damn right it is," I say, and this time I mean it completely. "She knows we've got her back."
"Always," Griff adds quietly. "No matter what."
The three of us sit in the space we built together, watching early guests arrive and take in the view from the windows that frame the mountain landscape. Everything looks perfect. The flowers are gorgeous, the lighting is warm and welcoming, the musicians are playing exactly the right background music for arrivals.
