He steps up beside his father and places his hand on the bible once again. “Please, make your vow to your people,” Brett says.
Rylan takes a deep breath and proudly looks out to his people. “I, Rylan Neill, make this vow before the council and the members of The Guard. I vow to uphold the traditions and values The Guard has put in place and lead with an open heart. I will put our community above all and strive for excellence while remaining true to myself. Our children’s safety and education will remain my top priority and last but not least, I vow to commit my life to our cause.”
I’m pretty sure I’m the first to my feet. Tears pool in my eyes as I applaud our new leader.
Holy Crap. He did it.
Brett takes his seat on the stage as Rylan moves before the podium thanking everyone for their support and reminding them of the festival that was planned for tonight to celebrate both Rylan’s new reign and Brett’s time as our leader, a festival that thanks to Miss Layton, nearly didn’t go ahead, but I have a feeling it’s going to be less of a family friendly festival and more of a raging party.
He dismisses us all, but I wait around. I look around the room, still getting curious glances from everyone, but notice Miss Layton duck out a side door with tears streaming down her face. I’m sure she feels awful, but seriously, she could have come to us if she wanted to talk about it rather than airing all our dirty secrets. I know she has always had a thing for Rylan and it makes me wonder if she did it in spite, maybe out of jealousy.
Jacinta walks by me, stops, and gives me a tight hug. “I’m still mad at you, but I just have to say that you’re still my best friend and I love you, and apparently so does Rylan because he wants to marry you and just told the whole freaking Guard,” she says with Trey and Daniel smirking behind her.
“I know,” I laugh, still kind of freaking out about that. “I love you too and I’m sorry I made you mad.”
“I still think you’re wrong, by the way,” she says.
“I know you do,” I tell her.
She gives me a quick nod, realizing that I still think Phillip Cooper was behind it all. “Ok, well, do you want to get ready for the party with me?”
“I’d love to,” I smile as I feel familiar, strong arms wrap around my waist.
Daniel immediately drops into an exaggerated bow. “My excellence,” he says in an awful British accent.
“I’ve been holding back on you Daniel, but do that again, I’ll kick your ass into next week,” Rylan says, making Daniel grin that grin that I know so well before turning away and taking Trey and Jacinta with him.
“You realize you just started a war with Daniel?” I ask him.
“Yeah,” he groans. “You sure about the whole Daniel thing? You know, it’s not too late to change your mind about him. I could get you a dog or something else if you really insist on having a pet.”
“Oh, shut up, wise leader,” I laugh. “You know he’s one of my best friends and you make it far too easy for him to tease you, which to be honest, it’s quite fun to watch.”
He shakes his head, but can’t help grinning back at me. He takes my hand and laces our fingers together, and I won’t lie, being able to do little things like this in public has me smiling like an idiot. He stops every now and then to shake people’s hands who stop to congratulate him in the hallway.
We finally make it out of the building together and now with just a bit of privacy, I turn to look at him. “So,” I start a little awkwardly, hardly knowing how to bring this up. “That was quite the declaration you made in there. You know… about us.”
“Yeah, it was,” he agrees looking down at me with those sparkling gold speckled eyes that I love so much.
“You said some things,” I remind him.
“I did,” he says, playing with me.
I look deep into his eyes and see the absolute joy he’s getting out of my awkward squirming. “You realize I’m only eighteen and not even close to being ready to be a wife.”
“I know,” he says, finally being serious and giving me some answers. “I’m not asking you now, but one day you’ll be ready and when that day comes, I’ll be right there on one knee,” he warns me, unintentionally making me imagine the moment which totally makes me swoon.
A slow grin creeps over my face as I give him a nod. “Ok,” I say, accepting his warning. “I’ll let you know.”
“You do that,” he winks.
I let him go as people are coming from everywhere to talk to him and head down to the hotel to meet Jacinta.
I knock on her door to find the room filled with all my friends. “Oh, thank god,” Nora says as she sees me walking through the door. “I thought this feud was never going to end,” she says relieved that I won’t be coming to her room to hang out anymore.
“Whatever,” I laugh as I crash into the bed with everyone else. “You’ve been waiting years for me to come knocking on your door to hang out.”
“You wish,” she murmurs under her breath, stubbornly needing the last word.
“What’s going on?” I ask Jacinta who’s typing into her laptop.
“We’re searching for places to live after this,” she says, not looking up from the screen. “There’s a nice place around the corner that has room for us all we could move there once we receive our assignments.”
“Really?” I ask. “Show me,” I say, snatching the laptop off her lap and flicking through the pictures. “Oh wow,” I grin. “This place is awesome.”
“Yeah, it’s cheap too, seeing as though I doubt I’ll have my trust account much longer,” she whines.
“Whoa, a little upset you’ll have to make an honest living?” I laugh.
“You know, I haven’t missed your sarcasm these last few days,” she tells me with a smug expression.
“Oh, shut up both of you,” Nora scolds us. “We need to get ready for the party.”
“Fine,” I grumble passing the laptop to Trey and getting up off the bed with Jacinta and Nora. The girls both try on dresses but lucky me, I’ll be in staying in my uniform, so apart from hair and makeup, there really isn’t much for me to do.
Half an hour later, we’re ready to go when a knock sounds at the door. Daniel gets up to answer it and I hear his voice sail right across the room. “Well, well, well, to what do we owe this great pleasure, my lord?”
Oh no.
I turn around knowing exactly what’s about to happen and am not disappointed when I see Daniel’s body fly across the room and land on the bed with a thud. Rylan stands in the door way and I must say, I’m pretty impressed that he managed to throw Daniel’s massive body clear across the room.
“What are you doing here?” I ask with a smile as I skip towards the door and throw myself in his arms.
“Well, I figured now that everyone knows about us, you might like to accompany me to the festival?”
“Rylan Neill?” I ask with a wide grin. “Are you asking me on a date?”
“I sure am, baby,” he says, picking me up and walking deeper into the room. “You about ready to go?”
“Yep,” I announce with a proud smile as I dash across the room to grab my things.
Rylan crosses the room to look over Trey's shoulder as his nose is still glued to the screen of the laptop. “What’s going on?” he asks.
“Looking for places,” Trey grunts in that boyish way then tilts the screen to give Rylan a better look.
“Kind of big, don’t you think?” he comments.
“Nah, not for the five of us,” Trey says, swivelling in his chair and throwing an arm over the back to look at Rylan properly.
“Five?” he asks, looking around the room and mentally doing the math before looking up at me with a question in his eyes.
“Yeah,” Trey responds. “Me, Jacinta, Daniel, Nora, and Bianca.”
“Yeah… no. Bianca’s not living with you guys,” Rylan announces to the room, making Daniel sit up on the bed and look at him in confusion while Nora looks on with interest.
“With me,” he states as if it’s the most obvious answer, though I should have guessed this is where he was taking this, after all, the guy wants to marry me one day and has already convinced me to live with him for the next few days. “I’m not sure about you, but I kind of like coming home to see you there and I don’t plan on that changing.”
“Eh...,” I say as Jacinta comes and sits down beside her half-brother to watch the show Rylan and I are unintentionally putting on. “You’re kidding right? This morning you tell the whole guard that you want to marry me and now we’re moving in together?”
“You’re not telling me you haven’t liked living with me the last few days, are you?” he asks, walking up to me and pulling me into his hard chest, already knowing my answer if he takes the late night wakeup call I gave him last night as anything to go by.
“No,” I admit. “I’ve loved it,” I smile.
“Good,” he smiles. “Then let’s make it permanent.”
“Really?” I ask. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, Bianca. I’m sure.”
“I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into,” Jacinta tells Rylan from her position on the bed.
We both ignore her as I look up at him with awe. “You’re amazing,” I tell him, twining my arms around his neck and pulling him in for a kiss. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” he says. “Now can we go and get this party over with so I can take you home?” he says with a knowing smile.
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 17
I walk down the street, fingers laced through Rylan’s with my friends all around me as we make our way to the party. My jaw nearly hits the ground as I realize the party isn’t being held in one of our ball rooms, but outdoors in the middle of the city center.
Roads have been blocked off and fairy lights strung between the overhead street lamps that also remain off, casting some kind of awesome fairy light canopy above us.
“Wow,” I murmur as I take it all in.
Rylan grins down at me, clearly realizing I’ve never seen a guard party quite so out there and different. I’m used to the hoity toity ones that like to show off how much money The Guard has.
“Impressed?” Rylan asks.
“Uh… yeah,” I scoff. “It’s beautiful.” In fact, it’s so beautiful I could imagine myself getting married under a fairy light canopy like this, you know, in the future… way, way in the future.
Jacinta comes up beside me, gawking at the view, the same way I still am. “Are you seeing this?” she asks then gasps as the crowd of people before us part to reveal a massive dance floor and DJ Booth set up. “Holy Shit, this is the best guard party I have ever been to,” she squeals. “We have to go dance,” she says, grabbing my hand and Treys, and giving us a hard tug.
I glance back at Rylan a little torn between staying with him and dancing the night away with Jacinta. “You go, I’ll catch up,” he promises.
“K,” I grin, rushing off with Jacinta.
I scream as my whole body is suddenly lifted off the ground and thrown over someone’s shoulder. I start hitting at the persons back, yelling to be put down, but the wicked laugh that comes from the man has me realizing it’s just Daniel, giving me…. wait, giving me and Nora a lift to the dance floor. What a moron. He has each of us thrown over his shoulders. It’s a miracle he hasn’t dropped one of us.
The music blasts and Daniel bends down to set us on our feet. I hardly have a second to catch my balance before Jacinta is on me, pulling me even deeper onto the huge dance floor. “This is so freaking awesome,” she calls over the sound of the music.
“I know,” I grin, giving my ass a little shake.
The boys and Nora eventually catch up to us and we spend a good portion of the night with our bodies squished up against each other’s as we attempt to dance among the other partiers.
An hour later, we leave the dance floor huffing and puffing. Jacinta and I spot an empty table far off in the distance and sprint off to get it while the boys get everyone drinks.
Making it just in time before another bunch of people sit, we fall into exhausted heaps on the chairs. “Wow,” I sigh. “I really needed tonight,” I tell her as we wait on the boys.
“I know,” she agrees. “Life has been far too crazy lately, I just need everything to slow down for a while.”
“Tell me about it. At least you’re not constantly on the lookout for threats. I feel like I barely get a second to relax, but it will get better once we get our assignments.”
“Yeah, fingers crossed,” she says with hope as she holds both her hands up to show me that she does, in fact, have her fingers crossed. “So, things seem pretty serious with you and Rylan now,” she says, spying him across the street, making his way towards us.
“Yeah,” I agree with a growing smile. “It is, but nothing more serious than you and Trey.”
She thinks about it for a second before agreeing with a doe eyed smile, clearly getting lost with her thoughts on Trey.
Rylan makes it to our table just as the guys and Nora do too. Rylan takes the seat next to me as Daniel puts down a bottle of water in front of me then hands one across to Jacinta. We all sit around the table, just enough chairs for each of us.
I sigh as my friends chat around me, realizing that nothing on earth could possibly get better than this moment. Everything is going so amazingly good right now, well, apart from the attack on headquarters last week which still weighs heavily on my mind, especially that little boy who I have since discovered was named Parker, his mom and dad also died that day.
Rylan looks over to me. “You ok?” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” I smile.
My smile quickly vanishes as a figure approaches Rylan from behind, he sees the change on my face moments before he senses the person there. His back stiffens as he slowly turns around. He lets out a barely noticeable frustrated sigh as he gets to his feet to face her.
Miss Layton hovers awkwardly at the table as all my friends go quiet, listening in.
“Is there something you need?” Rylan asks.
Her eyes quickly dart to mine before going back to Rylan with a cringe. “I, uh… I owe you both an apology,” she says awkwardly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were in love with her.”
“Really? You didn’t seem too sorry when you stood up in front of The Guard and outed us,” he says so lowly it almost sounds like a growl.
“I know, but I truly am sorry,” she says, begging for forgiveness.
Rylan lets out a sigh. “Penny, I think you should leave.”
She starts to protest and Rylan holds up a hand, not wanting to hear the rest. “Wait,” I call, shooting to my feet and cutting them both off. Rylan gives me a curious look. “It doesn’t make sense,” I say, turning my gaze on her. “Why did you do it? You had nothing to gain by telling the world about us. A lot of people already knew so it was bound to come out sooner or later.”
She hesitates for a moment. “I just thought the people should know the truth,” she states.
“No,” I say, narrowing my eyes on her. “That’s not it.”
Rylan focuses his hard glare on her, one I know firsthand is damn scary. “What’s going on Penny?” he demands.
She whimpers before flicking her eyes awkwardly to me again, clearly wishing she was having this conversation without me here, but seriously? She came to us just now. “I just thought…,” she starts slowly with another cringe. “I thought you and I had something and then she came along,” she sneers, looking back to me with a nasty glare. “I figured it was maybe a one-time thing, something I was willing to overlook and so I waited for you to finally come back to me, and it never happened. Then she got sent away and I waited for you again,” she says with sadness in her eyes. “You
never came, just kept going back to her. She is a child. When will you realize that you should be with me?”
Rylan takes a deep breath and twines his arms around my waist, a move that she certainly does not miss. “What the hell gave you the impression that there was something between us?”
“I… I just thought… At the beginning…”
“No, Penny. You thought wrong. You and I never had anything, even before Bianca, I could hardly tolerate you let alone be in a relationship with you,” he states firmly. “What you did today nearly cost a lot of heartache for a lot of people and could have potentially made damaging changes within The Guard. You should have come to me first instead of causing such a scene,” he says, clenching his fist in anger.
I place my hand over his to help calm him down. A rage induced outburst probably isn’t the best thing for our people to witness of their new leader on the very first night of his reign, might probably send a bad message. He lets out a breath as his body relaxes with my touch.
Penny starts to protest again before Rylan holds up his hand, cutting her off. “You should leave,” he tells her. She casts one more venomous look towards me before dropping her eyes and walking away.
Rylan looks down at me, nearly in shock as I look up at him with an accusing smirk. “What?” he asks. “How was I supposed to know? I told her to back off at the beginning and she had.”
I laugh as I hold onto him. “You’re kidding right? The whole Academy knew she was in love with you.”
He looks down at me in horror. “Ugh,” he groans as he sits back down at the table and pulls me onto his lap.
Daniel sits up taller with a massive grin on his face. “I’d just like to thank you, oh wise, caring leader, for letting us all be witness to that show.”
Rylan shakes his head in exasperation as I grab my half empty bottle of water and launch it across the table at Daniel. “You’re such a dip shit,” I laugh as the bottle rebounds off his head and lands straight back in my hands.
He rubs his head, but looks at me with an impressed smirk. “That was awesome,” he declares as Nora rolls her eyes at her boyfriend, but cracks into a fit of giggles as Daniel drags her off her seat and pulls her up to his own lap.
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