by Amira Rain
CHAPTER 16
The next week was something of a “pre-honeymoon” for Matt and me. Having long talks and making love nearly every night, and sometimes in the morning, too, we fell deeply in love. By the time our wedding day arrived, I felt like we’d known each other for years.
Our ceremony was one of several performed that day in the village hall, which was a surprisingly beautiful building with an exterior in the style of an old English Manor house, with wide, wood-framed windows, wood-framed arched doorways, and two chimneys displaying intricate masonry work in the form of layers of pale gray stone. The interior of the hall was unmistakably Tudor, with dark hardwood floors and an incredibly lofty vaulted ceiling supported by curved wooden beams.
Before I’d seen the village hall, which was tucked in an area of woodland a short distance away from the square, I’d expected something like the city hall that was in Moxon. Which was to say, a three-story drab gray building undistinguishable from many other city halls in the country. However, it seemed clear that at some point in the past, one of the original non-shifter residents of Greenwood had a love of Tudor architecture, as the hall was one of the only pre-shifter structures in the village that remained. All the houses and most everything else had been torn down, as they’d all been in a sad state of disrepair.
Enid, Mira, and the rest of the village decorating committee had decorated the hall with garlands and vases of both white and red roses, which filled the hall with a fresh, sweet scent. The committee members also helped Amy, the other brides, and I dress and do our hair and makeup in a large room in the back of the hall, where Matt normally held meetings with his advisors and lieutenants.
When it was time for me to walk up the aisle to Matt, I took Uncle Dan’s arm, having asked him a few days earlier if he would do me the honor of giving me away. He’d responded by saying that he’d be thrilled to, and that he’d been hoping I’d ask.
I’d paid him a visit at his house in order to ask him about giving me away because he hadn’t been back to Matt’s and my house since the night he’d brought over the cake. Since I’d told Dan before he’d left that night to please stop by anytime, even just to say hello, it kind of surprised me that he hadn’t done so.
However, it was winter in Michigan; snow was falling nearly every day; and I just pretty much figured that maybe Dan just hadn’t been too keen on going out in the weather. At any rate, although my visit to his house had been brief because I’d had to meet a team of movers unloading some equipment at the new gym, he’d seemed very happy to see me, and even happier still when I’d asked him to give me away.
Walking up the aisle, which one of Enid’s little girls had strewn with rose petals, I glanced at Uncle Dan and the guests sitting in wooden benches a few times, smiling, but I really only had eyes for Matt. In fact, about halfway up the aisle, I found I could hardly look away from him. Dressed in a dove-gray suit that matched his eyes, and with his dark hair glinting in the light from a few rustic wood-and-electric-candle chandeliers overhead, he looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. Although, of course, he looked like that nearly every day, even just dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.
While I made my way up the aisle, he seemed to only have eyes for me, too, and when I reached him, he took my hands and spoke to me in a low voice while looking deeply into my eyes.
“You look so absolutely gorgeous, Kylie…words can’t even describe.”
Thrilled by what he’d said, I smiled and told him in a low voice that he was looking pretty amazing himself, making him grin in return.
During the ceremony, which was brief, simple, and traditional, we continued looking into each other’s eyes, which I almost found as pleasurable and intimate an act as making love. Almost, anyway.
We continued to only have eyes for each other during our wedding reception, which was also at the hall, and which we shared with the other couples who’d gotten married that day. I didn’t mind this at all. In fact, I was ecstatic to share a wedding reception with Amy, and she was ecstatic to share hers with me.
Growing up together, we’d often dreamed about both meeting dashing men and getting married in a double ceremony together, so to have this scenario come true, at least for the reception part, was something we found just plain cool, having a laugh about the fact that not many dreams held by twelve-year-old girls actually ever come true.
Late into the night, Matt and I danced, ate, laughed, and talked together, and I was so euphoric about officially being Matt’s wife that I couldn’t even manage to be mad at myself when I spilled a little red wine down the front of my simple satin sheath wedding dress. I definitely wanted to keep it forever, and I wasn’t sure if any dry cleaner would be able to remove the stain by the time I got the dress to them, but I just figured the wine stain would serve as a reminder of the blissful evening.
“The day your dad and I got married,” I imagined telling my children someday, “I was so happy and so in love that I didn’t even care when I spilled wine down the front of my dress. The day was perfect anyway.”
Because of the Bloodborn situation, Matt and I weren’t able to leave the village to go on any sort of an official honeymoon, although we did spend a solid twenty-four hours in the house together, making love, taking long whirlpool soaks together, and cooking a Thanksgiving dinner for two while a snowstorm raged outside.
The night before, at the wedding, I’d invited Uncle Dan over to share the holiday meal, but he wouldn’t hear of it, saying that he’d definitely take a rain check from me for future years, but that Matt’s and my “honeymoon Thanksgiving” should be shared by the two of us alone.
Besides, he continued, he’d been invited to have Thanksgiving dinner with Enid and her family, and he’d already promised to bring June’s village-famous pumpkin pie cake, as well as a traditional pumpkin pie made with another of her recipes.
A week went by before I came back down to earth from the high of the wedding, but even then, my bliss didn’t really go anywhere; it just more like seemed to diffuse, becoming more of a calm happiness that I carried with me wherever I went.
However, despite all this newfound happiness, I found myself very unexpectedly weepy one evening after having spent all day working in the new gym, painting a newly-partitioned area that would become the “parent’s waiting area.” I’d also cleaned the entire building pretty much top-to-bottom and had unfolded, dragged, and positioned numerous extremely heavy mats. Amy had been in bed all day with a stomach bug, so she hadn’t been able to help.
After tossing a paintbrush in a bucket, I surveyed my work, wiping my eyes and trying to figure out why on earth they were filling with tears. I supposed maybe they were just tears of happiness. Or tears of accomplishment, if that was even a thing. It was only after I took a long stroll around the gym, straightening a few framed gymnastics posters and repositioning a few mats as I went, that it finally hit me.
I was feeling emotional because I was proud of myself. Proud that I’d taken a leap of faith and had left my old life behind to come to Greenwood. Proud that I’d started over with a new gym, determined to rebuild my dream. It wasn’t just this feeling of pride that was making tears periodically fall from my eyes, though. It was the fact that I wished that my dad could have been there to share in my pride and accomplishment. To look me in the eye and tell me that he was proud of me. I wanted to hear it and say it back.
When Matt came in the gym around seven, bearing dinner from one of the restaurants in town, I nearly jumped a mile, despite the fact that I’d been expecting him. He’d actually wanted to come earlier to help me paint, clean, and move mats, suggesting that he even take a half-day off from patrol to do all this, but I’d insisted on doing everything myself.
The gym was Amy’s and my dream, and I wanted all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it to be ours. At least ninety-nine percent ours, anyway. The two of us had already determined that we were going to have to have Matt and Mack help us position
a used, “old-school” vaulting horse that had arrived earlier that week. With a solid steel base, it weighed hundreds of pounds, and Amy and I hadn’t even attempted to move it.
The three moving men who had unloaded it from their truck had even had extreme difficulty lifting it from a wheeled dolly to the floor. With Matt and Mack’s increased strength as shifters, though, even while in human form, Amy and I didn’t think moving the vault wherever we ultimately decided we wanted it would be any problem for them.
A bit embarrassed that I’d jumped a mile and had whirled around upon hearing his footsteps, I gave Matt a little smile, wiping my eyes. “Miss lost-in-my-thoughts, here. You can always count on me to get lost in a daydream and then jump out of my skin coming out of it.”
Frowning, Matt crossed the distance between us in a few long strides and asked me what was wrong. “You don’t look like you’ve been daydreaming. You look like you’ve been crying.”
Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to convince him otherwise and not really wanting to anyway, I told him I’d just been shedding a few tears about some “dad stuff.”
“It just kind of crept up on me. I was finishing up the painting, and I just realized how much I wish he were here…just to see what I’m building and accomplishing.”
With sadness for me clearly visible in his eyes, Matt said he understood, and I continued after wiping my eyes again.
“It’s really so strange…I want a father here to be proud of me, but I never even knew Seth personally, so I don’t even know exactly why I’m crying for him, specifically. I guess just because he was my biological father…and maybe I’m even mourning the loss of Mr. Decker more than anything. I guess I just thought that I could find him again after all these years…or at least a version of him…and that he would be my dad.”
After setting the bags of food on the floor, Matt took me by the hand, guided me to sit down on a wooden bench nearby, and then had a seat beside me, still holding my hand. “Who was Mr. Decker?”
I realized that I’d never told Matt about him. “He was this man who came to my adoptive dad’s funeral. He was a professor at the college where my dad taught math. Mr. Decker taught…maybe psychology, I think. Or maybe sociology. I don’t know if I ever actually knew. But, anyway, he came to the visitation at the funeral parlor with his wife and two daughters, and he and his daughters played games with me and watched me do ballet. Mr. Decker did magic tricks, and he gave me money to buy toys, and he told me I was so wonderful and special and smart, and he….”
I paused, wiping away a few hot tears. “He was just such a dad. I wanted to be one of his daughters…and when I got a few clues about my biological dad, and then learned that he really was my dad because of my shifter gene test, and then when I thought that he might still be alive…I just thought there was maybe a chance that I still could be a daughter of a Mr. Decker-type dad.”
With his eyes radiating sympathy, Matt said he understood. “And I’m so sorry that you never had a chance to experience that Mr. Decker-type dad. I’m sorrier than you know.”
I thanked him with my eyes filling with tears again, and he pulled me into his arms, guiding the side of my face against his chest, which had become my favorite crying spot. It was there that I cried for a few minutes, periodically sniffling, feeling as if I were officially letting go of my Mr. Decker dream.
Finally, once I felt like I was all cried out, I lifted my face and told Matt that I was determined to move forward. “I know it’s what Seth would want. I know he’d just want me to be happy.”
Matt nodded, and after wiping my eyes one final time, I tried to give him a smile.
“No more tears from me. I think that was the last of them…hopefully for a good long while, anyway. From here on out, I think things are just going to be all happiness and joy for us. I can just feel it.”
Later, I would think of those as my “famous last words” before all my happiness and joy with Matt was nothing but a memory.
*
While we ate our take-out dinner in my little office in the front of the gym, Matt seemed unusually quiet, and I asked him if anything was wrong.
Cutting a tequila-and-lime-glazed grilled chicken breast with seemingly deliberate slowness, as if stalling for time, Matt didn’t answer right away. And when he did, saying that everything was just fine, then giving me a little smile, I wasn’t quite convinced. However, that’s when it hit me that he was probably worried about if and when the Bloodborns were going to attack, and I asked him if this was what he was thinking about.
After almost looking confused for a moment, which was not the reaction I’d been expecting, he nodded. “Oh, right. The Bloodborns. Yes…I’m still concerned about them attacking. I know it’s when and not if. My men and I can handle them, though, no matter how many fighters they send. I actually hope they send many…thousands, even…just so that my men and I can take out a significant portion of their population in one fell swoop. As it is, they may have had enough fighters left to claim Canada, but their numbers have dwindled dramatically from what they were at the height of the war. This isn’t to say that I’m being overly-confident, though, because I know that can be a fatal mistake. The Bloodborns are still many and strong, and I know that…but I believe my men are stronger.”
Matt paused to take a drink from his can of pop before continuing. “It may be one heck of a battle when the Bloodborns finally attack, but I truly believe everyone here in Greenwood will be just fine. All that you non-dragon residents will have to do at the time of the attack is just take cover. My men and I will do the rest in the sky, making certain that we don’t let any slain Bloodborns ‘drop’ over areas of the village where there are houses and buildings. I’m actually going to try to move the battle to the west of the village, where it’s all just pure forestland, if I can…which I’m reasonably sure I can.”
Wondering how he was going to do that, I set my plastic knife and fork down. “Well, if the Bloodborns are going to be attacking from the north, which I’m assuming they will, coming from Canada, how are you going to move the battle to the west?”
Matt finished taking a drink of his pop and set the can down. “I’m basically just going to lure them west…and I think they’ll easily let themselves be lured since I’m the dragon they want to kill most, and probably first. The moment we get word of them approaching to attack, which we’ll get from the bears in the U.P., I’m going to fly a short distance to the west, while my men will take to the skies directly north. Then, when the Bloodborns reach Greenwood and the battle begins, I’ll charge in, briefly engage a few of them, just to make my presence known, before speeding away west. If my suspicions are correct, nearly every single Bloodborn fighting will follow me, and they will be followed by my men. Then, once everyone is as far west as I’d like, I’ll come to a stop and begin fighting.”
“And you’re sure you won’t get hemmed in or anything like that, being that there will be an army of Bloodborns between you and your men at that point?”
Matt said he wasn’t too concerned about that. “I’m a strong fighter, and I can usually fight my way out of any ‘corner’ I’m backed into. And if worse comes to worst, and if I’m really getting hit by wave after wave of more Bloodborns than I can reasonably handle, I’ll just try to go around south, where there will be more of my men.”
Feeling a bit anxious about Matt’s safety, but knowing that after fighting countless battles against the Bloodborns during the course of a four-year war, he had to know what he was doing, I told him that all sounded like a good plan.
The following day, Amy called me early in the morning to tell me that she no longer had a stomach bug.
Pausing in making a sandwich to take with me to the gym, I told her I was so glad to hear that. “So, you’re feeling completely better?”
“No. Not at all. In fact, just this morning, I’ve already thrown up twice.”
Confused, I leaned a hip against the island. “But I thought you just said--”
What ensued was a boisterous over-the-phone celebration, with me exclaiming my surprise and congratulations so loudly that Charlie came flying into the kitchen to check on me, clearly alarmed.
Once we settled down a bit, Amy told me that she probably had to have gotten pregnant the very first night she and Mack slept together in order for her to have turned two pregnancy tests very clearly positive earlier that morning.
“Although when Mack called Clara, who’s the registered nurse midwife here in the village, earlier this morning when I was getting sick, she said for him to tell me that it’s not unusual at all for women carrying shifter offspring to have very clearly positive pregnancy tests very early on…even as early as two weeks post-conception, which is about where I’m at. She also said it’s not unusual for women carrying shifter offspring to have really bad morning sickness, which I’m apparently suffering from. Shifter babies just seem to produce really strong hormones all-around…the pregnancy hormone that turns tests positive, and whatever hormone it is that produces morning sickness. Which…speaking of which…I’ve gotta let you go. I think I might be making another trip to lean over the toilet bowl again very soon.”
Later that day, the quietness Matt had displayed the evening before continued at dinner. Again, when I asked him if anything was wrong, he said no, then gave me a small, kind of tense-looking smile.
“Guess I’m just tired out from running patrol today.”
I could definitely understand that because on a daily basis, Matt led his men on numerous patrol flights in dragon form, covering hundreds of miles, and sometimes flying far outside of Greenwood. These patrols were necessary for the protection of everyone in Greenwood, as well as everyone in the state and nation, because they were for the purpose of doing continual surveillance to make sure that the Bloodborns didn’t enter the country.
