“We will,” I promise. I would love to come back and ask her more questions. Plus, she must be lonely.
I don’t know when she switched from the cave to a she, but she’s very definitely a she.
“Thank you, child,” she replies.
With no warning whatsoever, the cave rumbles, and I feel magic release. It hits me straight in the chest, and I grunt. The others are making similar noises as they’re hit with the same thing that I was. My head becomes fuzzy, my vision blurred, and for a moment, through the blurry haze, I could have sworn that I saw Zephyr, but when I blink again, I realize that I must have just been seeing things because he isn’t standing behind River and Baz like I thought.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Neith
I’m quickly distracted as my hand begins to tingle, and then I feel a weird weight wrap around my finger.
Suddenly, everything clears, the fog that descended on my brain dissipates, my eyes clear, and the ancient magic disappears, the cave falling still and silent once again.
We stay frozen to the spot, staring at each other.
“So, we’re all true mates,” Van says.
“It would appear so,” Dimitri adds and then lifts his hand. “Apparently, we got a physical representation of that.”
“What?” Reed asks, and then lifts his hand.
I lift mine, and sure enough, wrapped around my ring finger on my left hand is a beautiful ring. It has a black band, with green vines wrapping around the band and in between the stones. There’s one big black stone with gold flecks in the middle that glitters in the low lightof the witch lights, and then on either side are smaller dark green and red bloodstones. I count them, one for each of my men.
And they are fucking my men, a cave said so.
That’ll be interesting to explain.
I suppose I should be surprised that Dimitri was included, but honestly, I would be more surprised if he wasn’t.
Then it hits me.
“Oh my god, did we just get married? Did a cave marry us? I didn’t get to wear a pretty dress. Navy, Neera, Rana, and Joey are going to be pissed that they didn’t come. Oh my fuck I’m never going to hear the end of it from Sully and Earnie. No one fucking kissed me!”
Baz grabs my face in his hands and kisses me, effectively shutting up my rambling as I melt into him. Kissing Baz feels like home. Like he’s always been mine, and we just didn’t see each other for a while.
He growls, pulling me closer, and my hands fist in his shirt.
Eventually, he pulls back, smiling softly down at me. He says, “Those traditions are for the humans, and we take what just happened far more seriously than most of them do, but if you would like a celebration like that, I am one hundred percent certain that none of us could deny you.”
“He’s right,” Griff says as he gently pulls me into his arms. “You’re our true mate. It didn’t happen like I thought it was going to, and there were definitely some surprises that we should probably talk about, but we are all extremely happy with what happened.”
I look around at the others taking my time so that I can read their expressions properly to ensure that they really are okay with it. I know that there’s nothing that we can do about it, and I know that technically we aren’t married in the human sense, but we are bound ina more complete way. I wonder if this is where the human traditions stem from?
It’s possible.
They are all looking at me with open and happy expressions.
I grin, “Well, I guess we’re married now. Do all of your rings look the same?”
Asking the important questions, always.
They all hold their hands out, and the possessive part of me practically purrs with satisfaction when I see their rings, that’s physical proof that these amazing, kind, deadly, and gorgeous men are mine.
Their rings are all the same as each other’s and are similar to mine. They’re made out of the same black material as mine, but have a thicker band, and they’re all studded with the same number of bloodstones as there are of us.
“Ha, no returns bitches, you're stuck with me,” I grin, my words make the Voices groan, admittedly, I could have said something lovely and sweet then, but they were the first words that I thought of, so those were the words that escaped my mouth first.
