by Aya DeAniege
Gerrid pulled me among the tables, to a little area by the harpist. The area was bereft of tables, I thought it had been for the harpist to play in, but she had set up on the one side.
He glanced around nervously, then cleared his throat, looking me up and down.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Hold, hold on, damned shoe again,” Gerrid went down.
Again?
I frowned at him, then looked around. Everyone was staring at us. Of course, they were staring, but not at us, they were staring at me. When they caught me looking at them, they turned away suddenly, but the moment they saw my gaze pass, they turned back and looked again.
“Why are they staring?” I muttered.
“Uh, well…”
I turned to Gerrid. I frowned at him, then looked a little lower than his face.
He had a ring box in his hands.
I swallowed instinctively and blinked my eyes.
“What are you doing?”
Alphas didn’t marry. Until all genders could marry, most of their companions had refused to marry.
Which meant that Alphas didn’t marry.
Which is the only reason they don’t marry.
Because their male companions—the only ones who had had that offering—wouldn’t marry unless the Alphas changed the laws. It was just that no Alpha was in politics and it was taking longer. The law was more than willing to recognize that any Alpha could marry any adult of any gender that they would like, but they wouldn’t allow everyone else to do so.
“Rebecca, will you marry me?”
“You don’t even know my last name,” I said.
Gerrid hesitated.
“Margrove, that’s your last name,” he said. “But this isn’t about that, or even how long we’ve known each other.”
“Three days,” I said.
“I’ve seen Alphas make a lifetime commitment after twenty minutes,” he said. “When you know, you know.”
“I have three children who aren’t yours.”
“Born on two different men, that doesn’t matter to me.”
“I have stretchmarks.”
“I think they make you look beautiful.”
“I have nothing to my name.”
“Totally a deal breaker,” he said with a straight face and a shake of his head.
“I just, I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and regret this.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Are you certain?” I asked. “I don’t even know my children. They could be screaming little beasties. Who bite and throw things and try to push you down the steps or something.”
“That’s a regular Alpha child.”
“There are three of them,” I whispered, bending closer to him.
“Yes, we’ve gone over that. Do you want to say no?”
“No, I want to say yes. But how do we afford it, or plan it? An Alpha hasn’t gotten married in… in… well, in so long that I don’t even know. It probably needs to be this massive holiday or something. With a parade and international guests.”
“Not really,” Abraham said, stepping up to us with a little book. “Did you know you can be ordained in like thirty minutes? Online no less. They really should properly register these sorts.”
“If we get married, companions the world over will be upset,” I countered.
“This wouldn’t be legally binding,” Abraham said. “Mainly because they make you file the paperwork three months in advance. Alphas have had joining ceremonies for centuries. It’s a little like the common-law ceremonies some have who are not allowed to legally marry.”
“So, us marrying isn’t going to get either of us in trouble?” I asked.
“No, absolutely not,” he said.
I took in a long, slow breath. “On one condition.”
“The condition is?” Abraham said.
“One of yeh get into the politics track and make it law so we can marry legally,” I snapped.
Abraham worked his mouth, twitched his nose, and turned ever so stiffly. Everyone was watching us. He turned back and bit his bottom lip gently.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“I mean it, Abraham.”
“Oh, that little tingle down my spine and the phantom feeling of my ear being pulled tells me that you are being very serious.”
“Okay, then how would we plan it?”
Abraham’s eyebrows raised. He moved around us and cleared his throat as he raised his hands.
“Dearly beloved.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” I said.
Then I looked down at the bouquet, at my dress, and it finally dawned on me, what they had just done. I looked past the flowers, to Gerrid.
My favourite colour is purple, but if I ever get married my colour will be blue.
That’s what I had told Gerrid, and he had actually paid attention, and remembered. I couldn’t even remember what he had told me his favourite colour had been, but he had remembered mine.
“What if I had said no?” I asked.
“I’d drink myself to death,” he said.
“Oh. Well, that’s not a great plan,” I said. “You should get up. The groom stands beside the bride.”
“We had to look it up,” Abraham said, then he raised his voice a little. “We are gathered today to link this woman and this Alpha. Hi has agreed to put her first. Hi has agreed that her life comes before hes.”
The old pronouns, the ones the Alphas had abandoned to be fair to the females. I didn’t know why Abraham didn’t update the language. Surely, he was translating something into the modern tongue.
“She has agreed not to kill hime.”
The others, moving slightly closer, shared a little chuckle.
“As long as, what were her words?” Abraham paused. “Ah yes, as long as one of yeh changes the laws of our nation, so that she might marry hime legally.”
“I can have it done in ten years,” someone called out.
“One year,” I called back.
“Five.”
“One year,” I repeated.
“Two, best I can do.”
I looked at Abraham, whose eyebrows rose just slightly.
“I’d say that’d be a reasonable timeline,” he said, the surprise evident in his voice.
“Fine, two years.”
“Good, we have a bargain. Two years and I can marry someone,” Abraham said.
I almost pointed out that he was already married, but I bit my tongue. No one but Gerrid and I knew that Abraham was married and kept a house with children even. They didn’t know I knew that, because they thought I had been sleeping during their discussion.
“And so the she accepts hes ring to mark her as married. This is the only warning any man, woman, or Alpha will receive. And hi—”
“Will be wearing a wedding band,” I said sternly to Abraham.
“Not traditional,” Abraham said.
“I’ll wear it,” Gerrid said. “It’s worn on the left, I’m right handed, not going to be using it to hit anyone.”
“Hey, it’s your marriage,” Abraham said.
“Rise and place the… well, the one ring we have at the moment, onto her finger.”
Gerrid rose with the ring box. He pulled the ring out of it’s little spot and took my hand gently, slipping the ring onto my hand. Then he held my hand in his own and glanced at Abraham.
“You may now kiss the bride.”
“No vows?” I asked.
“You two get to do that in private,” Abraham said. “I think.”
He opened his book and flipped through several pages. Lips moving, grumbling a little to himself, Abraham closed the book and shrugged.
“We don’t rightly know, but I’m going to strongly suggest that you two keep that to yourselves. Between yourselves. Marriage sometimes means keeping a secret. Sometimes it means not showing the world what you are or what you could be. Your vows should be spoken in private. You can kiss now.”
I leaned forward and kissed Gerrid. He kissed me back, tongue slipping into my mouth. As he pulled away, he bit his bottom lip and arched an eyebrow.
“I’m feeling a little out of sorts,” I said.
“Impromptu wedding, I could see how that might make someone feel out of sorts,” Gerrid said with a little nod.
“Out of sorts doesn’t even begin to cover how I’m going to feel when she punches me,” Abraham said.
“Why am I punching you?” I asked.
“Dearly gathered, I present to you Mother Rebecca and her breeder.”
“You’re joking, right?” I asked, turning toward him.
“An Alpha who marries a Mother is referred to only as her breeder in relation to her unless he has a name for himself.”
“Okay, but why would I punch you for that?”
“You won’t,” Abraham said quietly, barely moving his lips. “She will.”
“Why would Rachel punch you for that?”
“Not her,” Abraham said quickly and under his breath.
“What did Penelope tell you to say?” Gerrid hissed back.
“Something I didn’t say,” Abraham responded without moving his mouth while trying to smile.
I glanced over and spotted Penelope. Her eyes were half closed, with a scowling look. Daniella, at her side, was looking around Penelope’s body, at her face, in a very careful sort of way, which told me that Abraham was probably right.
He was probably going to get hit.
“What now?” I asked Gerrid.
“Party,” Gerrid said. “Just a little one.”
“For you two,” Abraham said. “We will trash the garden and probably get arrested. Something about only blessing the union with drink and chaos, and how we shouldn’t be killing people. I don’t know, but I can’t name an Alpha who isn’t going to try to party it up.”
“And we just have a little party?” I asked.
“If you want the big party, by all means,” Abraham said. “You just seem more of a teatime buffet in a garden with glasses of wine and then sex all night long, type of woman. Oh, while they’re all, uh, casing the alcohol. Is this monogamous?”
I gave myself a shake. I couldn’t believe what he had just said.
“I’ve barely registered that I’m married and you’re asking about sex?” I demanded.
“But you’re so adorably sexy when you point at your mouth and say that thing you say.”
“I don’t feel like saying it.”
“Well, of course, not now. You’ve had a pretty rough couple of days, even by Alpha standards,” Abraham said. “You know what? Gerrid has my number. Take your time answering and just remember how much fun we had.”
“I only remember two things,” I said, holding up two fingers. “The first was you running away screaming like a child. The second was the time in the bathroom. However long we spent curled up having sex, I don’t remember. You get no points for that.”
“Fair enough. Just think about it,” he said with a little nod before he slipped away.
Gerrid watched him go. I sighed and looked at Gerrid.
His hands tightened in mine. He brought them up and kissed the back of them as I watched the motion. He smiled just slightly at me.
“This was your solution to the whole can’t claim me because I’m not a companion thing?”
“You were awake for that?” he whispered.
“Hm?” I asked, cocking my head and raising my hand to my ear as if I had heard something. “What’s that Rachel?”
“Throw the bouquet,” Rachel called out, timed just perfectly so.
“I should go see to that, I suppose,” I said, turning and walking stoutly away.
Gerrid followed along after me, not calling out at all, but keeping as close as he could. He wrapped an arm around me and smiled as Rachel fawned over the ring.
No jealousy there.
When dealing with Alphas, one did not think about marriage. One didn’t dare mention it. The Alpha families were set up in a specific manner, for a reason. They were meant to be part of a mutli-level family. They were polyamourous.
Because they expected to die.
It was one Alpha, one companion, one breeder, and sometimes a second companion as the Alpha’s boy grew, as a playmate so to speak. Because Alphas knew that at some point, they’d probably end up dead under a rival, but their family, their line?
That would continue.
Neither of us expected marriage, which meant that Rachel wasn’t jealous. She smiled and was happy for me.
Because that’s what a sister did.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three weeks later, Gerrid and I left Blane’s estate. In that time, I was tested along with Rachel for all sorts of things. We worked alongside one another and Blane hired trainers for the both of us.
I sat with several career councillors and we discussed my education. It would take at least a year to upgrade my skills enough to enroll in the courses. Blane agreed to teach me what he knew, because we discussed his papers. To take the courses, yes, I needed that year to upgrade. There were little holes in what I knew, and there was no helping that.
To work in Blane’s lab, I just had to be nearby. He would teach me what he knew and use me as an assistant whenever I could visit.
Gerrid agreed to drive me to Blane’s once a week to be an assistant in exchange for use of the lab. That was exchange of Gerrid’s time escorting me for the use of the lab. For some reason they were very clear on that point.
We also put in documentation and set things up that would allow me to take the lessons to get my license and drive myself to Blane’s to be his assistant. I was pretty certain Gerrid wanted to put off my being able to drive, but only because it granted him access to Blane’s lab for longer.
Leaving Blane’s, Gerrid had a sensible little something parked out front. We filled it with some gifts, but most wouldn’t fit. We would have to pick up a few each time we visited. The rest of the car was packed full of new clothing for me, books, and a new laptop for me to do my upgrading on.
Gerrid and I loaded into the car, and we drove and drove.
Rachel would be at Blane’s for another couple of weeks, training to move a little faster and work longer. Blane said it would help her to keep up with the Alphas. Morgan would stay on her land, dealing with the Alphas until she arrived.
Two hours in the opposite direction from Rachel’s land, we drove. Through the city and out the other side. Then off the main road and down a side road. We were far from anyone else when he pulled into a driveway.
As we pulled up to the house, I looked over it and the overgrown garden, then turned to him.
It was not the sort of home that I expected an Alpha to live in.
“It’s,” he shrugged. “It’s a fixer-upper on the lawns. I just haven’t gotten to it yet.”
“I didn’t really expect an Alpha to not live in an estate.”
“My father had a little house like this, off in the country,” Gerrid said. “Some of my best memories were in that house. When it came time, I bought this place and haven’t gotten around to a lot of the work. There hasn’t been a point until now.”
“It looks like there’s a hole in the roof, Gerrid.”
“There is.”
He said it in a matter of fact way, while keeping his eyes on the house. When he finally turned to me, I saw the moment of hesitance, of him waiting for me to speak the damning words.
“Shouldn’t that be fixed?” I asked.
“Uh huh,” he said. “It’s on my list to do.”
“We can’t bring the children here if there’s a hole in the roof.”
“No, we discussed that,” he said. “You’ll go see them on the weekend. We will see how it goes. If it goes well, then we will discuss bringing them here. That gives me at least a week to get the repair done. If you think I can’t get it done, then you’ve never really spent time around an Alpha.”
I knew that he was just t
rying to repeat back what I already knew, because he thought that I was trying to change the plans. I had only said it in the hopes of getting him to fix the ceiling because I didn’t want it to rain on my head.
“And the yard isn’t really child friendly.”
“The yard is your problem,” he said.
“Why is it my problem?” I asked. “I don’t know the first thing about gardening.”
“I have black thumbs.”
“Black thumbs, and you want to raise children?”
“Black thumbs don’t stretch to children. Just to plants. And, apparently, grass.”
“Grass? You kill grass? It’s practically a weed.”
“I don’t kill children, I can handle children.”
“Have you killed anything else?”
“Had a hamster once, it died.”
“That doesn’t count, they have a lifespan of, what, a few years? If the hamster didn’t die, it’d be suspicious.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll go and rent a truck and get the furniture. I have the supplies for the fix in the back, just need your help unloading.”
He slipped the keys out of the ignition and looked at the house. He was silent as he watched it, and I silent as I watched him. There was something heavy about his look. He was still waiting for those damning words. I wasn’t planning on giving them, however.
“No one knows this place exists,” he said. “I have other houses. I will tell you where they are. We will sell a few, likely. Maybe buy a few more.”
“They don’t know it exists, because they think it’s abandoned!” I protested.
Gerrid looked over at me and smiled.
“Did you know there’s a reclaiming law? See, during the old regime, a lot of houses were abandoned, just like this. Some big estates, huge even.
“The government stole a lot of Alpha land. Now, we’re in control, but we don’t exactly trace things through families like normal people. They created a reclaiming law in it’s place. If your ancestral home still stands abandoned, and you know the location, you can claim it. Or, alternatively, places like this.
“Come with me.”
He slipped out of the car. I did the same, following Gerrid as he walked toward the house.
It was in need of work, without a doubt, but the house had good bones, strong bones. It stood the test of time quite well. With a few minor repairs, it would make a very nice home. I couldn’t tell from the outside, but it seemed large enough to me that it might have been a few bedrooms at least. Lots of windows on the front, that would face south and catch the sun as it moved across the sky.
