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"You're going to be a terrible wife." He kissed her forehead. "You'll forget to eat, you'll track mud through the cabin, you'll wake me up at three in the morning because you had an insight about ward architecture. And I'm going to love every second of it."
She settled back against his chest. Her breathing slowed as her hand went still over his heart.
"Don't let me fall asleep," she murmured. "I have inscriptions."
"You have inscriptions," he agreed.
She was asleep in four minutes. He counted.
He lay in the morning light with his mate, his fiancée, his future wife curled against him, her breath warm on his skin, her heartbeat slow and steady against his ribs. The cabin was quiet. The woods outside hummed with the low, patient magic of a town that had survived its own buried truth and come out the other side.
He didn't move. He didn't check his phone or think about ward markers or worry about what the pride would say or plan his next move. He just lay there, holding her, and let the ordinary morning be enough.
It was more than enough.
It was everything.
35
STEPHANIE
The dress was not what she'd planned.
She'd told Twyla simple. Something she could move in, nothing fussy, no train, no veil. What arrived at the inn two days before the wedding, wrapped in tissue paper and smelling faintly of lavender, was a floor-length ivory silk that skimmed her body like water. Thin straps, an open back that dipped to the base of her spine, and a neckline that followed her collarbones with the clean precision of something designed by a person who understood that simplicity required more skill than ornamentation.
Steph had stood in front of the mirror in Diana's room and stared at herself for a full minute without speaking.
"Twyla had it commissioned from a seamstress in Asheville," Diana said from the doorway, arms crossed, honey-blonde curls framing a satisfied smile. "She sent your measurements. Don't ask me how she got them."
"I'm afraid to ask."
"You should be. She's terrifying." Diana stepped into the room and adjusted one of the straps, her fingers gentle. "You look incredible, Steph."
The morning of the wedding, Steph sat at the vanity in Diana's room at the inn while Diana worked her dark curls into a loose twist, pinning small white wildflowers into the arrangement with the careful attention she brought to everything. The inn was quiet. Twyla had banished everyone to the lake for setup, and the silence had the expectant quality of a house that knew something significant was about to happen under its roof.
"Nervous?" Diana asked, meeting her eyes in the mirror.
"My hands won't stop shaking."
"That's normal."
"I've excavated unstable sites in active seismic zones. My hands don't shake."
Diana set down the pins and rested her hands on Steph's shoulders. In the mirror, her eyes were warm and steady. "Your hands are shaking because this is real. Not a dig, not a job, not something you can document and analyze and file away. This is you showing up for someone and staying."
"When did you get so wise?"
"I run an inn full of supernaturals. Wisdom is a survival skill." Diana squeezed her shoulders. "He's going to lose his mind when he sees you."
"Good."
"That's the spirit."
They finished in comfortable silence. Diana helped her into the dress, smoothing the silk over her hips, fastening the tiny clasp at the back of the neck. The emerald ring glinted on her finger, the gold band warm against her skin. She'd kept her makeup minimal: mascara, a touch of color on her lips. Her olive skin had deepened from weeks of fieldwork, and the freckle-like gold flecks in her hazel eyes were vivid in the afternoon light.
She looked like herself. That mattered more than she realized.
"Ready?" Diana asked, holding out a small bouquet of wildflowers tied with twine, because Twyla understood that Stephanie would rather carry something from the woods than hothouse roses.
