The Initiative: Book One of the Jannah Cycle

by D. Brumbley

  “Looks that way.” He leaned back against a covered chair with Susan leaning against him, his arms loosely around her waist. “We haven’t been up to Doc Weber for the workup and official word yet, but sticks tend not to lie when they’ve been peed on. We just found out a few days ago, we’re gonna talk to Doc later tonight.”

  “Wow. Congratulations!” Anna smiled and watched her brother and Susan together, since it oddly seemed to comfort her, even though she was supposed to be focusing on her own wedding. It was one more thing that gave her hope for the future, and one less thing for her to worry about with Ben and Susan. Anna looked over at Cory after that, though, with a smirk. “Are you next? What’s the deal with you and Larissa?”

  Cory rolled his eyes. “Don’t rush me. I barely started spending time with her.” He was smiling, though, and he shrugged with his hands in his pockets. “Honestly, she’s out of my league. I don’t know how you deal with the whole Bickford thing. I know we’re the ones with the Prince last name, but they’re the ones who seem like royalty. Except Liam, but Liam’s just…yeah. He’s Liam. But Larissa and Logan both, you could put them in a palace on the other side of the world and they wouldn’t be worried about fucking up the flatware. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just…she’s just different. But pretty great, even with the differences.”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s working out so far. Don’t let her slip through your fingers, you’ll regret it.” She gave him a look of warning before she finally turned her attention to her father, who entered the room last. Liam’s girlfriends were helping her father, and Rachel smiled at her when she walked into the room with him.

  “Your father is very particular about making sure everything is just right. He also wanted to go talk to Logan before the ceremony started, but we made sure he didn’t miss you.” Rachel stepped back, since Anna’s father wasn’t an absolute invalid, letting him approach.

  “Dad.” Anna said with a smile as she went up to him and hugged him tightly. “You better not have been trying to scare Logan off. I swear I’ll be a good wife.”

  “I know you will. Never doubted it. But every husband should have a little fear in him when he marries a man’s daughter. Not too much, but a little.” Joseph smiled and pulled her into a hug, speaking softly so as not to aggravate his cough and thereby worry everyone in attendance. Every time she’d been around him in the preceding months, she could feel that he was slowly getting weaker, changing from the man she’d known to work on the farm from sunrise until sunset into someone whose endurance simply couldn’t measure up to the not-so-distant past. But in spite of the fatigue in his eyes and the growing weakness in his disposition, he was still her father. Still watching out for everyone in the family so long as he was able. “You look beautiful, Anna. I’m happy for you.”

  “I’m so nervous.” She admitted softly as she held onto her father even after the hug. “I love him, I want to be with him, but I’m scared of such a big change. I’ve never been anyone’s wife before.”

  Joseph pulled back enough to look his daughter in the eye, and laid a hand carefully along her neck, making sure not to disturb her hair or her makeup. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do for the guy?”

  Anna didn’t hesitate as she shook her head, since even though he’d married someone else before her, she’d stuck by as his best friend whenever he needed her. It nearly drove her to Jannah without him, but there still wasn’t anything that she would not do for Logan. He meant the world to her. “No, I’d do anything for him.”

  “Then I wouldn’t worry about being somebody’s wife. Just be his. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you either. That’s as far as anyone needs to be worried about when it comes to the way two people choose to go through the world. Any world.” He had promised that he would try to be supportive of her going off to join the Jannah Initiative, but she could see that there was no little strain in him when he made reference to it. It wasn’t going to be easy for any of her family members to watch her go, especially when there was no guarantee of her ever coming back. “Now, time to finish getting ready.” He reached into the pocket of the suitcoat he was wearing and pulled out a long, small jewelry box that still had some dust clinging to the velvet exterior. She had known the box since she was a little girl, especially since most of the time it had sat closed on her mother’s dresser. The woman hadn’t had occasion to wear the contents very often as the family grew, and as far as Anna knew, the box had been closed in the same place on the dresser ever since her mother had died.

  Anna’s mouth suddenly felt dry as she looked at the box, and her eyes stung as she thought about her mother. It had been years since her mother had died, but some days were still harder than others. Her wedding day was one of the harder days. When she had her first baby, she knew it would reopen the same wound that grief left behind. Some things the world took from everyone, and parents living long enough to see their children married was more of a rarity with every passing year. “Daddy…” There weren’t many pieces left of her mother, and she couldn’t bear to take another one away from her father. Rarely did she feel reduced to a little girl again, a daddy’s girl, but she did in that moment, and she wanted to protect him as much as he wanted to protect her.

  “Go on.” He took her hand and placed the box in it for her. “Your mother was a very particular and very precise woman. She knew exactly what she was doing no matter what she was about, and that includes exactly how to spoil our children. This has always been yours. I was just under very specific and insistent instructions to find the right time to give it to you.” He didn’t talk about their mother often, but when he did, he always smiled. From what Anna remembered, he and her mother had made a very happy life for themselves on that farm for the short life they had managed to live together. “So if you don’t take it, you’re gonna make her mad, and I speak from experience when I say that’s a bad idea.”

  Anna was suddenly grateful for waterproof makeup, even though she normally didn’t care for makeup at all. She wiped at a few tears as she opened the small box, which creaked softly in protest at being closed for so long. She couldn’t breathe as she looked at the contents and ran a finger over it. “I miss her so much.” She said just above a whisper. Anna remembered her mother telling her to take care of the family and her father for her, and she didn’t think about those last few days of her mother’s life unless something forced her to. Her chest ached, but she still managed a smile.

  “So do I.” Joseph agreed, then lifted the necklace out of the box for her and unclasped it to place it around her neck. Their family, the Prince family, didn’t have much, but her mother had actually brought the necklace with her from her own home, far to the northeast in the Quebec district, and had worn it on her own wedding day. The Brasseaux family hadn’t been particularly wealthy themselves, but several generations back, they had been, and the necklace was one of the last living pieces to prove it. The entire length was woven platinum in a delicate chain, picked out with flecks of diamond set at regular intervals. The centerpiece of the chain that settled into place against Anna’s chest was a brilliant flourish of diamonds in swirling arms like an inverted fleur-de-lis, with a final weighted teardrop diamond hanging from the lowest point. It was a necklace fit for a princess, beautiful and intricate without crossing the line into extravagance or gaudiness.

  Anna cried some more as she looked down at the necklace on her skin, but she wiped her tears eventually when her little sisters came up for a closer look. She knelt down and looked them both in the eyes as they looked at the necklace. “If you touch it, you can feel her a little bit.” She smiled at them as they reached their smaller hands to touch the necklace, then kissed them both on the forehead, leaving behind little prints of pink gloss. “She was a lot prettier than I am, too.” Anna always believed that, even though most people who knew her mother said that she looked almost like her mother’s twin, except that she had her father’s eyes.

  Her brothers were left shaking their head
s, but it was Danny who actually said it out loud, since he was young enough either not to know better or not care as much as he should. “You look just like her. Especially with your hair braided up like that.” He smiled, but then looked over at their father. Danny gave a quick sigh of relief when their father agreed.

  “It suits you, Princess.” Joseph mostly-whispered, still trying to favor his voice to keep from coughing. He closed the jewelry box and handed it over to Emily, who was constantly looking for some way to help with things, then turned back to Rachel, who was still by the door to make sure they found their way back to the hall for the ceremony. “I think that about does it. Ginny, go run and grab the flowers, you remember where you left them?”

  Ginny had to pause to think, but then she bolted out of the room to get the flowers, since it had been her job to watch over them. Anna smiled as her littlest sister ran out, then she moved to walk beside her father. She looped her arm through his and gave him a kiss on the cheek, glad he could still walk her down the aisle, even though she knew it would mean that he would need to be in a chair the rest of the day to recover. He had insisted, though, and she wasn’t going to deny him something he wanted if he really pushed it. “You’re going to make sure I don’t fall, right? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least a dozen women who put traps down the aisle as revenge because I seduced their husbands before they did.”

  “Nobody’s putting down traps. And if anything, you’re going to be the one catching me if I trip. Though those heels do look pretty dangerous.” He looked down at her as they started down the hall, the rest of her family going ahead of them at Rachel’s direction.

  “Clearly I had nothing to do with the selection of my footwear. The dress I had a little bit of say in.” She smiled and walked quietly with her family until they got to a hallway just outside the hall. Her family scattered to take their seats, Ginny handed her the bouquet, and then it was just her and her father waiting for their cue. As soon as she got a nod from another of Liam’s girlfriends, Margo, they started walking.

  When Logan came into sight, Anna couldn’t see anyone else, and she clung to her father’s arm so that something could keep her moving. He looked incredible, and in that moment, one of her fondest dreams was reality in front of her eyes.

  Logan had spent the last half hour standing up at the front of the hall with Liam looking over everyone who had come for the wedding, saying goodbye internally to each one of them in turn. The Webers were there, including Sierra’s boyfriend Gary, which had made him smile. Kevin Reeves had come as well, even after what his family had endured. Everyone Logan had ever gone to school with seemed to all be there, along with those of their teachers who were close enough, Quentyn and Veronica and all the others he employed from time to time on odd jobs around the estate, very nearly everyone he had known his entire life within a three-hundred-mile radius. The fact had made him happy that so many people cared to attend until he looked over the crowd and realized there were only about four hundred people in attendance. It was one more reminder to him of how empty the world was, and had oddly been one more piece of encouragement that his and Anna’s decision to go to Jannah was the right one to make, for the sake of the entire world.

  When Anna appeared, all such thoughts evacuated his brain to make room for the vision of her walking toward him. He smiled at the playfulness of her dress, since it suited her perfectly, but it was her eyes that he focused on the whole way up the aisle. He still couldn’t believe what they were doing, where they were standing, what was happening, because it felt too much like a dream to be real. There was no way Anna was really going to marry him. That was just a fantasy. There was no way his life was really going to become the thing he had always wanted it to be. That wasn’t the way the world worked. People didn’t get what they wanted, people got what they could eke out for themselves and decided to be happy with that. Dreams didn’t come true, yet there she was walking toward him, proving every shred of common sense he had completely wrong.

  By the time her feet stopped moving, Anna was almost close enough to reach out and touch Logan. She felt like she needed to, to prove that she wasn’t dreaming. Her father tugged on her arm, and she looked away from Logan to look and smile at her father. She kissed his cheek when he let go of her arm, and Ben came up to make sure that their father made it back to his seat. As soon as it was just Anna and Logan, she actually did reach out for his hand, and as soon as she actually felt his firm grip, she felt like crying all over again. “This is actually real.” She whispered incredulously as she stared into his eyes.

  Logan just smiled. “Stop reading my mind. It’s a mess in there.” He held onto her hand as if he was making sure to keep her from running away, and didn’t even look away from her when the officiator began speaking. Logan hardly understood a word, and he actually thought to himself that it was a good thing somebody in the audience was getting everything on film. He would need to go back and watch it again later to remember anything at all about what was said. All that mattered was Anna there beside him and the grip of her hand in his.

  Anna barely registered when the officiator asked her to say her vows, and while she hadn’t prepared anything, she knew that she wanted to say something. She had to say something so that Logan would always know how much the moment meant to her. “I’ve wanted to be your wife for as long as I can remember.” She eventually said, even though she was aware that the rest of the crowd knew their history, and knew that she wasn’t his first wife. That didn’t matter to her. All that mattered was that she was his. “Ben can attest to this, but I used to practice writing your last name in my notebooks, and everyone here knows I’m not usually that sentimental.” That got the crowd laughing, but she still didn’t look away. “This really is a dream come true for me, Logan. We’ve spent so much of our lives being partners in everything, especially trouble, but this is something new for us. Something amazing. I love you so much, and I will always love you, Logan Bickford.”

  His grip on her hand tightened, and a few giggles and awws drifted out of the audience. “This life, this world isn’t really known for granting wishes. I can’t say anybody ever expects to get most of what they want. But right now, right here, you’re the only wish I care about coming true. I’m not going to waste that and I’m never gonna look back from that. I’m yours, Anna. You might have been scribbling my name in notebooks, but everything I am has got your name on it. I love you, and that’s for always.”

  The officiator gave them the traditional vows afterward, and after a couple of ‘I do’s and a declaration that felt too long, the words finally came out of his mouth. Man and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Logan Bickford. Anna felt like jumping up in joy, but she didn’t have time before Logan’s strong arms hauled her to him and he was kissing the breath out of her lungs. Anna wrapped her arms around his neck and probably ruined all of her flowers in the process, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. All she cared about was the feeling of his lips on hers and the realization that she was now Anna Bickford. She was Logan’s wife.

  There was applause and cheering from the crowd as Logan picked Anna up off her feet in the kiss, but he eventually put her down, a few protesting petals from her bouquet falling on the ground between them as she regained her balance. “Hey there, Wife.” He said in a low voice that only she could hear, completely ignoring everyone else in the world.

  Anna giggled against his lips and stole another short kiss before she replied. “Hey there, Husband.” She pressed her forehead to his. As the crowd continued to applaud, she moved her lips closer to his ear. “I so want to get out of here with you, Mr. Bickford.”

  “You and me both.” He groaned against her ear before he leaned back, still holding onto her by her waist. “Dancing first, and mingling. Then we let the rest of these people party as long as they like while we get on with our own.”

  Anna nodded and walked with Logan down the aisle before everyone else, and they made their way across the expansive front lawn to wher
e a bonfire was set to be lit along with tables upon tables of food and alcohol. As they walked across the grass, mostly alone with people trailing behind them, she looked down at the beautiful ring that he had planted on her finger. She’d had no ring until the ceremony, but she was mesmerized by what was on her finger. “This is so beautiful, Logan. I…it steals my breath away. Not quite like you do, but close.”

  That made him smile, since he hadn’t been sure whether she would like the ring or not. It was more fragile-looking and elegant than Anna tended to style herself most of the time, but he had wanted to get her something that would be uniquely hers. It was a single band, since they’d only been engaged for two weeks, but the platinum was worked in almost an organic pattern, a single marquis cut diamond as the centerpiece with many more smaller flecks dotting the rest of the ring. “I’m glad you like it. When it came in, Liam and Larissa spent most of an hour telling me how much of an idiot I was for getting you something sharp enough to cut me when you inevitably punch me for saying something stupid.”

  “I’ll learn to punch with my other hand.” She replied with a smirk and pulled him into another kiss as they got closer to the reception area. If there hadn’t been a path laid out through the grass, she was certain she would have kicked off her heels already. Or requested that he carry her, which she knew he could do. Easily. “You should also know,” She said as she looked back at the crowd. “I’m not wearing any underwear, so don’t get too crazy with the dancing. I have a lot of exes back there.”

  That had him grinning all over again, and he squeezed her hand before he twirled her once, which made her dress fan out, though not so much that she would be flashing anyone. “I’ll keep that in mind. I would say I could go for the garter later, but…” he looked down to check her out, “I’m pretty sure that’s not part of the deal.”