by Diana Seere
But whenever Jess had caught his eye, his humor had faded, and above his rakish smile, his eyes were sad.
What had Lilah said to him? Or was it something he had said to her?
When the family gathered at the door to leave, Jess hung back, half expecting Derry to do the same so he could flirt with her or escort her back to the main house—but he only gave her a nod as he walked out with the others.
“Can’t this wait, Jess?” Lilah asked quietly, rubbing her temples. She was putting on her coat to sleep in a private room in the main house, avoiding Gavin until the ceremony the next day. “I still feel weird from fainting like that. Tomorrow’s kind of a big day.”
Gavin, also in his coat, strode over and put a protective arm around his bride, giving Jess a stern look. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough? Walk over with us but don’t upset Lilah.”
Jess felt both guilty and annoyed. “She’s already upset. I want to know why.” She opened the door. “I’ll walk with her, Gavin. You stay here. You have the rest of your lives to be together.” The sweet, simple truth of this lodged deep into her bones. It was what she wanted for herself, what she was beginning to think she was close to having.
“I need to be there in case she faints again,” Gavin said, hugging Lilah closer. “I can carry her—”
Touching his face, Lilah twisted out of his embrace. “No, she’s right. I have to talk to her. We’d have trouble separating tonight anyway, and you know it. Without Jess, you’d probably end up spending the night with me in the house.”
Gavin’s mouth curved into a wicked smile. “So?”
“Tomorrow,” Lilah whispered, going up on tiptoe to kiss him. “Then forever.”
“Always,” Gavin growled, closing his eyes.
Flushing from the heat the bride and groom were generating, Jess stepped outside and waited another minute for Lilah to join her.
Finally the two sisters were alone, walking together in the darkness.
“What happened in there?” Jess demanded.
“Well, I kissed him, he kissed me, I grabbed his—”
“Not that. God. As if I couldn’t guess,” Jess said. “The fainting. What did you say to Derry?”
Lilah paused. “I didn’t. Everything went dark, and the next thing I knew, you were half-naked, looking down at me on the floor.”
“Why did you want to talk to him in the first place?”
Lilah tugged her collar up around her face. “I don’t remember,” she mumbled.
“Quit stonewalling. Tell me.” Jess grabbed her elbow. “Please. Something huge is happening, but I don’t know enough. You’re marrying a guy who turns into a wolf, but you’re more upset about me sleeping with his brother, who by the way can turn into a bear, but that’s not what made you so upset, and now you won’t explain!”
Lilah’s mouth dropped so low her chin nearly hit the floor. “You know they’re shifters?”
“You told me!”
“And you ridiculed me!” Lilah shrieked. She grabbed her head and moaned, flinching, looking around in case anyone else heard.
“It was a pretty ridiculous statement to make, Lilah! No one would believe it.” Her voice went soft, vision blurring with overwhelm. “I still can’t quite believe it, but I saw.”
“Saw?” Lilah looked horrified. “Saw what?” She clutched the neck of her own shirt like she was holding on to the earth.
“Saw Derry… change. So yeah, I believe it now.”
“Oh, Jess.” Lilah reached over and gripped her forearm, her shoulders dropping with relief. “I see.”
“Why… why are you so upset then? Because I know?”
“No.”
“Because I’m with Derry?” If being with a wolf was good enough for Lilah, being with a bear shouldn’t raise any eyebrows, least of all her sister’s.
“I didn’t realize. I couldn’t believe that Derry… I mean, I assumed it was just sex for him. Derry was just being Derry, not caring how he was going to hurt you,” Lilah said. “But now… if you’ve seen him shift, if you can… hear him… I can’t interfere. I think that’s why I fainted. I was trying to interfere with fate.”
“What? That’s nuts.”
“This is bigger than me,” Lilah said. “Bigger than you. It’s dangerous to try to stop it. We don’t know enough.”
Jess felt her sister’s forehead. “You must’ve struck your head when you fainted. That headache could be signs of a concussion.”
“They’re shifters,” Lilah said. “You believe that now because you saw it for yourself. Nothing I said could’ve convinced you, but now you understand, somehow, that it’s true and possible and real. You can feel it. Like faith. Or love.” She spoke that last word like a caress.
“You thought I was falling in love with Derry? Is that what upset you?”
“I already knew you were falling in love with him. I was afraid he was going to break your heart.”
Jess cast her mind back to the dinner. Suddenly she remembered. “You freaked out when you heard me ask why I could hear Derry’s thoughts.”
“Then you can hear him?”
“Yes,” Jess breathed. “What does it mean?”
Lilah pressed her thumbs to her temples. “I don’t know. I thought I did, but I’m not sure.”
“Is your scar bothering you again?”
Lilah had an old scar that had given her piercing headaches for most of her life. “It’s been hurting ever since I tried to talk to Derry,” Lilah said. “I don’t think I’m supposed to get involved. You two have to figure this out for yourselves.”
“Can you and Gavin hear each other’s thoughts?”
“Yes,” Lilah said.
“From early on? Before… you were really close?”
“From the first moment. I knew, and he knew, from the moment we met.”
Jess hadn’t known anything when she met Derry except that he was dangerously, impossibly sexy.
Holding Jess by the shoulders, Lilah continued. “There are shifter legends about love and fate. About finding the One for you. Gavin is mine. I am his. I could hear this in my mind from very early on. It was magnetic and undeniable. Not all the shifters believe the legend, but it’s ancient, and I’ve seen a book—” She dropped Jess’s shoulders and clutched her skull. “I can’t talk anymore.”
Seeing her sway, Jess quickly embraced her. “You need to get in bed. Gavin was right. I was selfish to keep you out here in the cold.”
As she helped her sister down the path to the house and then escorted her to a quiet suite far from any of the other guests, Jess thought about how certain Lilah was about Gavin, love and fate, everything.
Jess hadn’t felt anything like that. She doubted everything—herself, Derry, their future. Had Derry looked so unhappy because he’d known they didn’t have what Lilah and Gavin did?
After getting Lilah into bed with a hot wrap and a kiss on the cheek, Jess returned to her own room, more confused than ever.
The next day, Jess stood with the other bridesmaids at the altar in their glamorous gowns, waiting for Lilah to appear at the top of the white carpet. She had butterflies in her stomach and a tissue in her fist and kept sneaking glances at Derry, hopelessly trying to read his mind.
Are you the One? she wondered.
Silence. And his face over the impeccable tuxedo was stony and unreadable, a stranger’s face. He’d withdrawn behind his fortress, and she wished she could do the same.
The room had been impressive the day before, but now it was staggeringly beautiful. Like an arctic fairyland, everything was in shades of white—the roses, the aisle carpet, the silk-cushioned chairs, the billowing curtains hung from the painted ceiling, the hundreds of candles in crystal vases lining the aisle, and the trees.
Yes, trees.
Rising out of stone pillars and clouds of cotton, two dozen trees, leafless and snowy-branched, arched over the aisle. She and Derry had promenaded between them, not sharing any jokes or comments this time, bo
th of them perhaps overwhelmed by the moment.
Everything was breathtaking. Unreal. Magical.
And then Lilah had appeared, as beautiful as a dream, her gown the same white as the trees but trimmed with a shade of gold that perfectly matched her gleaming hair. The guests gasped and fell silent, watching her pass with awe.
Gavin clasped Lilah’s hand, and they turned together to Eva to begin their future.
As Eva read the vows, each word made Jess think of Derry.
Love. Honor. Forever.
Jess stared at a single rose in Lilah’s bouquet, trying not to listen anymore, because if she heard too much, she’d cry or jog across the room in her silver heels to fling herself into Derry’s arms.
“I now declare you are married,” Eva said.
When Gavin took Lilah in his arms and kissed her, the guests sighed as one being, then burst into applause. It was done.
Thinking it was finally safe to look at Derry, Jess broke her gaze from Lilah’s bouquet and searched for the black hair, the blue eyes, the slanted brows.
Him.
It was as if he, too, had been waiting for this moment to look at her. Their gazes slid together and held. Frozen in place, heart pounding, she drank in the sight of him and thought of every kiss, every embrace, his laugh, his kindness, his love.
I love you.
She didn’t know who said it. It rang in her mind and echoed in every atom of her body.
I love you.
A soft nudge from behind reminded her of where she was: standing like an idiot in front of hundreds of people who were waiting for her to follow Lilah and Gavin down the white, rose-petal-dotted aisle.
She was supposed to touch him again, but she didn’t dare. Although Derry held out an elbow, she ignored it and hoped her teary smile would distract people from seeing she hadn’t taken her partner’s arm. Without arguing, he walked beside her, not touching. Perhaps he, too, was afraid to risk any contact right now, when their emotions were so high.
Artificial snow began falling from the ceiling, dusting the bride and groom, as well as the trees, flowers, candles, and guests, with delicate fluff. Everyone laughed in delighted surprise, lifting their faces to the tiny flakes. It was like swimming in heaven, where everything was clean and bright and happy, and even the snow was warm.
This, Jess thought. This is what I want. This happiness.
Ahead of them, Lilah and Gavin disappeared into a private room, where they would have a moment alone before greeting everyone. The wedding party broke apart and faded into the crowd to find a glass of Champagne or a friend before walking downstairs to the reception.
She felt Derry’s presence behind her—large, strong, and familiar. She’d never wanted to hold him so badly.
“Jess,” he said roughly.
“We can’t. Not yet.”
“I know. Asher is watching.”
She was so tired of that man. “I don’t care about him. I care about Lilah.”
“He knows,” Derry said. “We should be careful.”
The crowd jostled them apart for a few long moments. They reunited in the hallway as the current of people flowed toward the staircase.
Jess glanced over her shoulder at the family patriarch. He was watching. “Who cares what he knows or doesn’t know?”
“I care.” Derry smiled at a stranger, then waved at another woman who was winking at him.
It was too much. She let the current pull him away from her and decided to get drunk with Molly.
He wished he could swallow his tongue. Reverse time. Turn back the hands by thirty seconds and reboot. As Jess let the crowd take her from him, a sour, questioning expression on her beautiful face, he kicked himself.
She was right. Who cared what Asher thought?
“Do you know what I think?” said an ominous voice from behind him.
Fuck. The devil himself.
“I do not know what you think, Asher,” Derry said in his best, breezy voice. “You are not my One. I cannot fathom what goes on in that tight little closed drum of a mind that you possess. Nor would I want to.” He flicked his wrist with a gesture meant to condescend as he turned toward the bar.
“I think you want a piece of Gavin’s life, and you’ve stooped to an all-time low in rutting with Lilah’s sister.”
Asher never was one to mince words.
“Pigs rut. I am not a pig.” Second time in two days he was compared to a pig. Funny, that.
“Bears rut too, Derry. You just can’t see it because she’s a human, and humans do not have rutting times.”
“You sound like a nature documentary filmmaker, Asher. What’s next? Will you quote me facts about parasites that take over grasshoppers and turn them into zombies?”
“I feel like one half the time, Derry.”
“A zombie grasshopper?” Derry peered at him in mock appraisal. “I can see the resemblance.”
Asher, as he so often did, ignored the joke. “All I seem to do is watch animals make fools of themselves, clean up their messes, and observe it.”
A flame of pure rage set his blood on fire, removing all humor from his body in one cold snap. “She’s not a mess.”
“You’ve made so many. How could you possibly know?”
Because she’s the One.
The words should have poured out from him, in anger or passion or some semblance of righteous indignation, but they caught in his throat like long hair in a thistle patch. He made eye contact with his eldest brother, seeing coloring so similar to his own but on a body with sleeker bones, wiry and preternaturally calm. Asher carried himself like a leader. Dry and standoffish, he triggered instant self-consciousness in most people. He expected obedience and respect. While Derry was inclined to find such expectations to be pure folly, his entire life he’d extended both to Asher.
No more.
He wouldn’t dare give an inch of emotional vulnerability to the person who represented the greatest threat to his lifelong happiness. And when you lived a life that stretched into multiple centuries, the stakes were high.
“My private life has never been the subject of inquiry from you before, Asher. Why the sudden interest?” Derry gripped a side table, his fingers pressing hard enough to leave marks in the wood. His vision sharpened, nose a thousand times more sensitive, senses bristling. A fluke of their physical environment had them in a corner to themselves, shielded by a long hors d’oeuvres table.
Asher’s voice felt like a lethal kiss as he said, “It’s bad enough that Gavin has decided to marry a human.”
“She’s not just any human.” Derry meant Lilah, but the statement applied to Jess as well.
“She’s an exception, yes.” Asher’s eyes gleamed with a repressed resentment, as if he wished his own words weren’t true. “But an exception. Not a rule.”
Derry remained silent. Asher was accustomed to Derry’s blathering, a nervous chatter he used in social settings to get away from pesky interrogations. As his blood pounded through him, nearly boiling, rushing against the walls of his veins and arteries like thousands of tsunamis, he knew that this was no mere conversation.
Not a simple argument.
With words, right now, Derry was fighting for his life.
He nudged his head to the left, motioning toward a set of sliders that took them out into an enclosed courtyard, a small patio used for private dinners. Two tables with four wrought iron chairs at each were balanced perfectly on alternating slate and obsidian landscaping stones, the slate dusted with a fine powder of snow that had fallen this morning.
Everything was black or white.
As the door made a snick sound, indicating its closure, Derry whirled around, pulse throbbing, self-consciousness long gone. He took in Asher’s features in the sunlight, combing over him as if seeing him for the first time. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Long face. Aquiline nose.
He was a man. Just a man. A shifter, yes, but one who was no more or less possessed of intrinsic power than any other. Not the monoli
thic, all-powerful brooding patriarch Derry had subsumed himself to all these years.
Just a man.
And a smaller one than Derry, at that.
“Get to the point,” he snapped, sounding so much like Gavin that he surprised himself, Asher’s tiny flinch a confirmation.
Asher made a derisive sound. “I have. Repeatedly. The fact that you’re too enchanted with a piece of quim to—”
The crunch came with the acrid scent of wet copper, his knuckles registering the pain long, long after he found the odor, nostrils twitching. Asher’s body did not move; only his head snapped sharply to the left as Derry’s right hook took out the bridge of his nose.
As the reality of punching his brother seeped into his barely functioning brain, a tiny voice inside cheered. It sounded remarkably like Gavin.
Asher dipped his head down, his silence eerie. Derry stopped breathing, every hair follicle on his body tingling, ready to shift.
Blood began to drip from Asher’s nose, marring the perfect white of the new-fallen snow.
“You will never speak of Jess that way. Are we clear?” The pain he should have felt in his hand—for hitting Asher was much like striking an ancient standing stone—dissipated as his words took on strength.
Asher’s chin stayed down as he calmly, coolly reached into his jacket, the breast pocket containing the ever-present ironed handkerchief that Derry knew so well, being the recipient of its use during much of his childhood. Dabbing his nose, Asher looked up and took Derry’s eyes captive.
“My deepest apologies for calling your latest conquest a quim. Is there another word you prefer?”
Yes, he thought.
Wife.
“Derry! Asher!” Edward’s outraged voice pierced the moment before he could open his mouth in reply. “What in the hell are you doing?” His voice shook, hand going to the buttons of his tuxedo, mouth dropped open, leaving the end of his beard covering his tie.
“We were having a brotherly conversation,” Asher said drolly. “Derry was just telling me about his new love.”