Kyle smiled up at him, a warm look in his green eyes. He wore the same uniform as Alexei, although his medals hadn’t needed readjusting, and they differed slightly from the ones Alexei had earned. “>”
A knock on the hotel suite door was the only warning they got before the door slid open and their family came inside. Evgeni and Maria Dvorkin made a beeline for their sons, and Alexei gamely hugged his parents, not caring if it jostled his medals. Kyle could fix them again if that was the case.
“>” Maria said with tears in her eyes as she held his face in her hands.
Alexei grinned down into his mother’s face, smoothing a thumb over the corner of her eye to wipe away a tear without smudging her makeup. “>”
Maria laughed a little wetly. She wore a bright teal dress beneath a black, floor-length wool coat lined in faux fur at the collar and sleeves. The gold necklaces, rings, and earrings decorated with colorful gems that she wore were all gifts her children had given her over the years.
“>”
“>” he said.
“>” Evgeni said, patting Alexei on the arm.
Phaedra skipped over to where they stood, a wide smile on her face. Her dark hair had been done up in microbraids that she’d tied back in a half ponytail. Fresh flowers had been pinned around the hair tie, and the colorfully printed dress she wore fell to her knees beneath her winter coat, standing out against her dark skin.
Phaedra held up a small bouquet of roses. “>”
Alexei grinned. “>”
She beamed at him, and Alexei reached out to tweak a braid. Phaedra was more leg than anything else these days, having hit another growth spurt. She was starting to look less like the child they’d rescued and more like the preteen she’d blossomed into. His family had adopted Phaedra after Alexei’s team rescued her from an illegal Splice lab last year. They’d given her a home and a family after she’d lost hers. She was still learning Russian, but her fluency was far deeper now than it used to be.
Phaedra might be a metahuman, but she was years away from needing to make a decision on if she wanted to join the MDF. Alexei rather thought she would, but they weren’t ever going to pressure her on her choice. For now, she was growing up in a loving family, and that was all that mattered.
Alexei looked over Phaedra’s head at his other sisters. Tatyana and Valentina both looked gorgeous in designer dresses beneath their coats, their jewelry a little more understated than their mother’s. They came over to give both Alexei and Kyle hugs, refraining from kissing them so as to not smear their cheeks with lipstick.
“>” Valentina said.
“>” Tatyana told them.
Kyle made a face. “>”
“>” Alexei said.
“>”
Alexei bit back the retort on his tongue about how Sean was clearly not there rubbing off on him, because his family was around. Kyle smirked at him, and Alexei took the high ground for once because they were on a schedule.
Also, he’d never hear the end of it from their mother if he made a sex joke in front of Phaedra.
Alexei tugged up the sleeve of his uniform to check the time on his embedded bioware. The numbers glowed brightly through his skin. “>”
They’d opted to stay at separate hotels with their families, meet at the venue, and walk down the aisle together. The ceremony started at 1500, and Alexei wasn’t going to be late for his own wedding. He was pretty sure someone had bet on that, and it was one pot of money he didn’t want anyone to win.
“>” Kyle said. “>”
The Ritz-Carlton was a fifteen-minute drive away through street traffic from the Boston Harbor Estate where the ceremony was set to take place. The elegant waterfront mansion was built over the Boston Harbor itself, with a pavilion that offered up a nearly 360-degree view of the water and Boston’s skyline.
New Seattle and Washington, D.C., had both been in the running as locations for the wedding, but coming to Boston was a defiant choice both Alexei and Sean could agree on. Alexei had grown up in this city after immigrating, and his family still lived here. It was also the place where he and Sean had been held captive and tortured.
They’d both come a long way from that hellish experience with the help of therapy, friends, and family. Coming to Boston to start the next chapter of their lives felt like a promise and a giant fuck-you to what they’d survived.
Alexei was never one to let the enemy win.
“>” Alexei said as they left the hotel lobby.
Kyle followed the direction of his scowl toward where the paparazzi clustered across the street, their camera drones hovering in the air. “>”
