by Lisa Ladew
“Why do you think he hasn’t claimed me yet? Do you think there’s something wrong with me? What happens if he doesn’t? Do we get divorced?”
Lorna laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “Calm down, girl, it just never happened yet. It will. Don’t worry. He’ll see that spot where your neck meets your shoulder and runs down into your back and he won’t be able to help himself. That’s why it usually happens before the mating. But always after.”
“Oh,” Ella said in a small voice.
“What, honey?”
“That’s why he hasn’t done it yet. I always want him to… you know, mate facing me.” She held her hands up, palms together.
Lorna threw back her head and laughed till tears ran down her cheeks. She patted Ella on the other shoulder. “Why honey, I never heard of such a thing. You just make sure you let him do it from behind at least once.” Lorna wiped her eyes, still chuckling softly.
Ella stared at her, blinking hard. “Do you think I’m too strange to be part of his life? I probably do more stuff like that.”
Lorna stopped laughing. “Light, honey, no. You are too sweet for words and he loves you more than I’ve seen a male love a female in a long time. You’re perfect just the way you are. The wolvens need new blood, a little fresh air breathed into us. You fit that bill right perfectly.”
“But what if nobody else accepts me but him.”
Lorna shook her head. “You’re kidding child, they’re already calling you Queen Gabriela. The One True Mate who was pulled into the Pravus and made it out alive. You’re famous honey, they’re out at that farmhouse reciting your prophecy to each other right now.”
Ella grabbed her hand. “My prophecy?”
“Life begins anew. Love brings two, then four, then six more. Khain’s downfall lives inside her. She will be queen.”
Ella shook her head. “What does it mean?”
“So much, child, but you don’t have to worry about any of that right now. You just worry about getting mated properly. That’s all you have to do for now.”
“Lorna, I just have one more question.”
“Anything, child.”
“What’s it like being married to a wolfen?”
Lorna smiled and grabbed Ella’s hand. “It’s wonderful. I think Rhen messed around with their instincts and made them be unable to be anything but sweet with their mates and their female young, in the same way that she made us all protective of humans. They can get a little hard on their male young, and you’ll need to watch that, but you? He’ll treat you like gold every day of his life.”
Ella took a deep breath and turned to look in the mirror. “Thank you. I’m ready.”
Chapter 49
Ella looked out the window of the helicopter, her bouquet in her hands, her veil thrown back over her hair, white satin spilling around her ankles.
“That’s it, up ahead and to your left,” their wolfen pilot said over the intercom. Behind them, Crew, Harlan, and Mac sat in their tuxedoes, Crew sedate, Harlan almost boisterous, and Mac green and staring straight ahead, a blank but somehow terrified look on his face. Trent and Troy relaxed on the floor.
Lorna turned around and yelled to him. “Macalister Niles, if you are going to puke, you do it away from the dresses! You hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mac mouthed, possibly afraid to turn or nod his head. Trent and Troy both looked at him, then stood and flattened themselves against the doors of the helicopter, out of his range.
“Ooh, it sure was nice of that dragen to let us use his helicopter,” Lorna yelled in Ella’s direction. “Funny, a dragon needing a helicopter though.”
Ella smiled, but couldn’t take her eyes off the ground in front of them. What looked like tens of thousands of shiften milled in one large crowd surrounding a large stage. Hundreds of thousands of shiften, maybe.
“There are so many of them!” she called over the noise in the cabin.
“They all wanted to come out. Everybody wants to witness history.”
Ella swallowed hard as the helicopter banked and headed for the landing pad. They had secured this location for the helicopter pad and the nearby airstrip that could handle even small jets. Now that Ella saw the crowd, she knew why.
The helicopter set down and Lorna whooped as the blades slowly came to a stop. “Wasn’t that fun!”
Outside, a male Ella didn’t recognize ran up with a step, placed it on the ground, and opened their door.
“Welcome, wedding party, I am Baron, here to take you to the bower.”
Ella bit her lip hard to keep from crying and ruining her makeup. Had Trevor found a male with that name or was it a coincidence?
Baron helped Lorna out, then took Ella’s hand and helped her make it to the ground without tripping on her dress.
He smiled at her. “Qu─”
“Ella, I’m just Ella, please.”
Baron nodded as the three males jumped out behind them, Mac unsteady on his feet. “This way, Ella.”
He led them to a horse-drawn carriage that looked straight out of the past. The carriage was wooden and looked handmade, and white and green flowers adorned the outside, almost as thick as a parade float. The horses were huge and thickly muscled, all-white with flowers braided into their manes and tails. Ella wanted to go to them, talk to them, rub their soft noses. She’d never touched a horse, but she imagined the noses must be soft. They looked soft.
Baron caught her eye. “They are Percherons. Draft horses like Clydesdales. Would you like to see them?”
Ella could only nod. The emotion of the day was too much for her already but she so wanted to see the horses.
Baron led her over and showed her how to hold her hand out, then he produced a bit of carrot from his tuxedo pocket for her to give one of them. It nibbled the carrot from her hand and she laughed softly. The nose was like velvet.
“Her name is Lucy. Now pet her here, and here,” Baron told her, indicating her cheek and then her shoulder. The horse watched her silently, its white eyelashes fluttering in the soft breeze.
“Thank you, Baron,” she whispered, allowing herself to be led away, back to the carriage where everyone else was already sitting. She stepped in and sat next to Lorna as Baron climbed onto the front and talked to his horses.
They started forward with a small jolt, toward the hum of the crowd. Ella stared at it as Harlan gave Mac a hard time about his fear of flying.
“Wolven don’t belong in the air,” Mac said, still a little green. “We’re not dragens.”
Harlan laughed and clapped him on the back, as their speed increased slightly over the rough dirt track. She could see now that the shiften were spread out over a huge hillside, many with blankets and lunches packed as if they were at a picnic, or an outdoor rock concert.
“This has never happened before,” Lorna whispered to her.
“What?”
“So many Wolven, bearen, and felen together like this.”
Ella swallowed hard. The thought made her feel ill. She was nobody.
The carriage pulled up next to a massive stage and stopped. Baron ran around and opened the door, while Crew, Mac, and Harlan boosted themselves over the side, landing hard, laughing and punching each other on the shoulders. Trent and Troy jumped out, looked at each other, and followed. The crowd laughed back and Mac, apparently recovered, held his hands over his head in a champions pose, which brought more laughter and some applause. Lorna was next and she went up the stairs without Ella. When she reached the top the crowd whistled and stamped their feet. Ella didn’t realize why for a second, but then she did. As one of the few female shifters left, Lorna had her own notoriety.
Baron held his hand out to her. “Your turn, Ella. They are going to love you.” Ella squeezed his hand hard. Why couldn’t they have had a small ceremony at some sterile government office? Or better yet, eloped?
She felt her knees weaken and she held on by sheer will, watching the crowd as they craned their necks to see her around the dai
s. One thing about the crowd bothered her and she couldn’t put her finger on it for a moment, but then she did. It was all males. No females and no children anywhere.
She squared her shoulders. She could do this. She lifted her dress and climbed up the steps, blinking in the heavy sunlight, not able to see what was ahead of her for a moment. The crowd was completely silent. Ella swallowed again, hearing a bird cry in the distance. She’d done something wrong. They didn’t like her. Her face began to flush.
It started. The applause. The whoops, the calls and chanting. She couldn’t tell what they were saying but the noise made their approval obvious. She looked out at them and raised one hand hesitantly into the air and the applause doubled, hitting her almost like a physical thing. She smiled, and then Trevor was there. She pressed into him, but the noise coming from the crowd made it impossible for him to hear her or her to hear him. He took her forearms and smiled down at her. Beautiful, he mouthed. Like an angel. He touched her bottom lip gently with his thumb and if she knew him at all, which she did, he wanted to place a kiss there.
She beamed at him, kissing his thumb, then letting him pull her over to the wedding bower. It was beautiful, a living thing with pots on each side with what looked like birch trees growing out of them. The birch was bent and twined at the top into an arch like some crazy bonsai tree and flowers grew wildly up the trunks, sprouting color like fireworks.
On the far side of the bower were Trent, Troy, then Blake, Harlan, Beckett, Crew, and Mac. On the near side, stood two females. Lorna and Kalista. Ella had no one else to invite. Her sister was in the hospital and Accalia, Accalia’s life outside the conversations they used to have online was a mystery. Ella had never even met her. Trevor had thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to invite her and Ella had agreed, even though it had twinged her heart a bit.
Ella held her head up high, knowing her mother and aunt wouldn’t have come even if they had still been alive, but that was ok. They had always been right. She was different. She was strange.
Trevor led her to the bower and she stood under it as the noise of the crowd finally quieted. Wade faced her, smiling, dressed in a simple dark suit.
Ella faced her mate and he held out his hands to her. She took them, feeling the tears drip down her face already. There was nothing to be done about them. Wade spoke and Ella hoped the event was being recorded. She couldn’t focus on his words. Couldn’t make anything make sense. All she could see was Trevor, her strong, healthy, handsome wolfen who would tear his way between worlds to save her. Who would give up his life to see her well. She couldn’t ask anyone for more than that.
I love you, she mouthed to him, seeing only him, hearing only him, like they were the only two people who existed in the world.
I love you back, he mouthed and somehow she kept herself from falling into his arms.
He would know the right moment for that to happen.
He always did.
Chapter 50
“You may kiss your mate,” Wade said and Trevor pulled her close. The moment had come. She closed her eyes and waited for his lips upon hers. When his soft touch made her skin tickle, thousands of shiften cheered, the massive noise making it seem like they’d been sleeping before.
As the kiss ended, Ella fingered her new ring, the one on her left hand. The one that connected her and Trevor for the rest of their lives.
They faced the crowd together and waved, and even the shiften standing on the stage with them laughed and clapped. Wade turned to the crowd and held up his hands. They quieted and turned around as one, each one of them retrieving something white and lacy from the ground behind them. As Ella watched, thousands of males released hundreds of thousands of butterflies into the air.
She gasped and held her hand to her throat. She’d never seen anything so amazing. So many wings beating, flying up, over the crowd, slowly, erratically, in the manner of butterflies. They bumped into each other but didn’t seem to mind, just turning direction and lazily flying upward in the sunlight.
A dozen butterflies flew towards her and she felt them land, whisper-soft in her hair and on her dress like she was a Disney princess.
She laughed as the symbols of new life fluttered about, some heading for the trees and bushes, many choosing to light on the males in the crowd as they had landed on her.
A large yellow swallowtail stopped right on her mate’s nose, opening and closing its wings and making her laugh again as the good and soft parts of her new reality settled in on her.
If her life was at least tipped a bit more towards butterfly kisses than demon battles, she would be ok.
“It is time,” Wade said, nodding his head at Trevor. Trevor gathered her up and pulled her towards the back of the stage, butterflies flying off her. She held up her hand one more time and waved goodbye. Goodbye to Lorna, Kalista, Wade, her brothers-in-law, her mate’s pack mates, and all the shiften who had come out to wish them well.
She tiptoed down the stairs that led off the stage. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” he said, and she thought she heard an edge in his voice.
Just to the right and behind the stage stood a cabin. The path to it was marked by white stones. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now her eyes were glued to it.
The claiming.
Trevor opened the door and pulled her inside, then leaned against it and smiled at her. “We did it.”
“We did,” she said, pressing herself against her mate. “There were so many of them. I can’t believe they all came out.”
“Of course they did, Ella. You represent hope to all of them. If I found my one true mate, that means they really exist, and if the rest of them are even half as pretty and sweet and strong as you are, every shiften who connects with one will be the luckiest male on earth. They will all leave here renewed and eager to find theirs.”
Ella flushed and looked down at the ground. Trevor took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “El, when you turn pink like that, it makes me hopeful.”
She smiled up at him. “Hopeful of?”
“That you’ll let me touch other parts of you that are pink and soft, that only I get to see.”
Ella flushed harder, but her body reacted strongly to his words. “Is that why we’re here?”
Trevor looked around at the room that Ella had barely noticed yet. “Yeah, actually, there’s─ ah, something we have to do.” He frowned as if he didn’t know how to tell her.
She made her eyes wide, like she was nervous, tickled that he seemed to be. “What? Will it hurt?”
Trevor licked his lips. “Ah, I don’t know. It’s not supposed to, but…”
Ella laughed merrily at the look on his face. “I know what it is, Mr. Big Bad Wolf. Lorna told me. It makes me hot just thinking about it.” Nervous too, but she wouldn’t tell him that.
His eyes widened, then lowered with lust. “Really, Little Red Riding Hood, aren’t you the bad girl?”
“So bad,” she agreed. “Do I get a spanking?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re into that?”
She laughed. “I have no idea.”
A growling started deep in his throat and his eyes shone for a minute as he dropped his head and stared at her, desire clear on his face. Ella shrieked and gathered her skirts, then turned and ran through the neat little cabin, around the coffee table, towards the only door she could see. She slammed it open and ran inside toward the bed in the middle of the room.
Trevor caught her around the waist and spun her around, planting her on her feet and holding her so she couldn’t wriggle free. “You’re mine now.”
She struggled against him for a moment, then stopped, dropped her hands, and waited. “I am yours, body, mind, and soul.”
He lifted his hands towards her face, then above into her hair, pulling off her filmy veil, placing it to the side on a tan leather chair. Then he pulled out each bobby pin, one by one, until her hair fell about her shoulders. Ella reached behind her and undid he
r dress in the back then stood patiently under his ministrations as he fluffed her hair back over her shoulders.
He moved his fingers down to either side of her neck, spanning it with his big hands, then down to her collarbone and chest. He tugged on her dress and it went down easily to the floor, where she stepped out of it, leaving her in white lacy bra, white satin underwear, thigh-high white stockings, and white low heels.
Trevor stepped back and looked her up and down. “Good night, you’re gorgeous. I’ll never know how I got so lucky.”
“You were sweet and kind and you took care of me.”
He shook his head, his eyes still traveling down her body. “Which I pledge to be and do until the day I die.”
Ella teared up at that. She knew it, but him saying it was so powerful she couldn’t hold back.
Trevor unbuttoned his tuxedo jacket and took it off, laying it on the chair as Ella stood in her panties and bra before him, watching, waiting for her mate, her eyes locked on his.
He shrugged out of the shirt and tie and kicked off his shoes, then dropped the rest of his clothes. She took a moment to admire his body, the strong planes and lines of it, the curves and bumps she would spend the rest of her life memorizing with her hands and her tongue. His erection stood strong, straight out from his body, curving up slightly and she longed to take him into her mouth. She would not, though. Not until the claiming. This was his show. She was his to do with as he wanted.
They came together and her bra disappeared in a flash, then her panties. “We’ll leave these on,” he said, fingering her stockings, the thickness of his voice making her desire rise. She couldn’t wait to have him inside her. She couldn’t wait to feel his teeth penetrate her skin.
He kissed her softly, deeply, sweetly, then worshiped her body with his hands and tongue. He lowered her to the bed, staring into her eyes.
Ella kissed him, then flipped over in his arms.
The growling started at once.
***
He was completely out of control, totally unable to help himself. His fangs grew exponentially and he felt them scraping his lower lip. He would take his female, hard and fast. He positioned her how he wanted her, his hands spanning her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh there. She moaned and undulated under him, driving his passions into a fast gallop. He positioned himself at her very center, then speared into her, throwing his head back with the pleasure of it, at the slippery bliss she offered him and he took, as was his right.
