Page 273 of Slashed Bonds

“Honey! The executives from the Elite Association of Sports America need you.”

We all turn.

A woman. Tall, taller than me by a head in her heels, in a black silk dress that’s ruched and fitted from the strapless top to the floor like it was poured on her and set. Hair a vivid red, not Killian’s tips, not my streaks, a red like a struck match, pinned up. Lipstick dark red. The red. And diamonds at her throat, her ears, her wrist that don’t shout, because diamonds that expensive don’t need to, and her arms, bare in the strapless dress, muscled, every inch of them inked from shoulder to wrist in work I’d put money on being Dox’s.

She reaches Mr. Vane’s side and hooks her arm through his and looks at Cassian.

“Oh, honey.” Delighted. “Is this the Omega you’re marrying?”

Oh.

I look at her. Up, down, the red hair and the red mouth and the ink and the muscle under the silk, and it’s clear, it’s so clear it’s almost funny.

This is Cassian’s mother. And this is why he looked at me on a loading dock the way he did.

“MARRY?”

Several people. At once. Naomi’s the loudest and Maddie’s the happiest.

Cassian’s calm. He’s gone from the edge of glass to the center of a dot in the space of a forehead kiss and a question about ice cream, and he answers his mother the way he answers a coach.

“Good evening, Mother. Father.”

He gestures to me. Doesn’t hesitate.

“This is Morrigan. Yes, she’s the Omega I was telling you about the other day. And yes.” He pauses. Lets it land. “She’s the one our pack wants. Her hand in marriage.”

Silence.

The whole circle. Vance. Naomi with her ring hand gone still. Theo with the grin gone off his face like it was never there. Behind me two men who haven’t breathed. And me, in a dress the color of my mouth, speechless for the first time since a loading dock.

Our pack wants. He said it to his parents. In front of hers. He said it like a lineup.

And underneath the speechless, where I keep the things I’ll look at later on a beanbag with a dog on my feet, a small cold voice that sounds like a woman on a bench at three in the morning says: the entrée hasn’t come out yet.

Forty phones. Between the plates and the speeches. And a woman in a dark green gown standing at the edge of this circle with three men in colored suits behind her who hasn’t looked at her own phone once, because she doesn’t need to, because she set the timer a week ago and she’s only here to watch the face.

She’s not watching Naomi’s face. She’s watching mine. She wants to see if I’ll leave before it lands or stay for it.

I don’t know yet. That’s the truth. I’m standing in a dress the color of my mouth with a man’s parents in front of me and the word marriage in the air and a yawn behind my teeth, and the only thing I know is that in an hour and a half this room is going to change shape, and I’ll either be in it or in a truck with ice cream.

“Sorry to burst this grand reunion of sorts.”

Roz. Appearing at Cassian’s elbow in a black dress she’s wearing like a tracksuit, reading glasses up in her hair, clipboard nowhere and present regardless.

“But I’ve got to kidnap the captain and the top players of the Blackridge Vipers for a magazine photo. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure,” Cassian says.

He looks at his parents.

“We’ll bring her over for dinner once the semifinals are done.”

“That would be delightful!” His mother. Beaming, a thing his face has never done and hers was built for. She looks at me. “Nice to meet you, Morrigan. We’ll definitely meet soon, and we’ll have all the time to talk. Yes?”

“Y-yes.”

I’m trying hard, and failing, not to feel as shy as I feel. Shy. Me. A woman who told Theo Ross to tick-tock across a dance floor is stammering at a redhead in diamonds.