"I'm not sweating."
"You're leaking. Profusely. From the face."
He adjusted his cuffs. That was the seventh time in maybe two minutes. I'd been counting. It was the most entertainment I'd had since Mary tried to order a margarita in the hotel bar and got carded by a waiter who looked twelve.
"I'm fine."
"Let’s go inside. It might be cooler and you're sweating more than Maeve did in Prague when she tried to convince us she wasn't in heat." I opened the door and stepped inside the chapel and leaned closer, dropping my voice to the register that made him want to hit me. "I think you might actually pass out at your own wedding. And in front of Gregor's tactical pram.”
Artem glared at me. "Ivan."
"Yes?"
"If you don't stop talking, I will have Blade remove you."
"Blade likes me. And I’m the best man. Your brother, and she is also my omega."
"Blade likes no one. He tolerates you because you sign his paychecks."
"That's basically friendship in our line of work."
He didn't answer. We reached the altar and his gaze drifted back to the chapel doors. His hands were clenching behind his back, which was a tell I hadn't seen since we were teenagers and our father was about to walk into a room.
I dropped the teasing. "She's not going to run, Artem."
He didn't look at me.
"She chose this. She chose us. Three days after giving birth, she stood on a staircase in your shirt and told you she was marrying you whether you liked it or not." I nudged his shoulder. "I don't think she's going to get to the altar and suddenly remember she left the oven on."
"She could do better."
"Absolutely. But that's not how any of this works."
That got him. The corner of his mouth twitched, and some of the tension in his shoulders unlocked.
The quartet started playing. Something classical and sweeping that Maeve had picked from a list the chapel sent over, not expecting Artem to pay for an actual quartet. She'd listened to three options and chosen the one she said made her feel "appropriately dramatic," which was a very Maeve way to choose wedding music.
The chapel doors opened.
Gregor came first.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper. He was six-foot-four of scarred Russian muscle, death on legs in any reasonable context, and he was pushing a tactical black baby pram with one hand while carrying a Yorkshire terrier in a bowtie under his other arm.
Fergus yipped.
Someone in the back pew—Killian, I think—made a sound like a cough and a laugh having a car accident.
Gregor parked the pram beside me with the precision of a man positioning a piece of field artillery. "The perimeter is secure," he murmured. "The ring is in my left pocket."
"You're pushing a pram."
"I am aware."
"With a dog in your armpit."
"Fergus refused to walk. He said the aisle was too long."
"Fergus doesn't speak."
