Page 15 of Mated to the Kingpin

Inside, the air is warm. Jasmine-sweet from some floating candles my mother insisted were necessary, mixed with the familiar scents of lemon wood polish and sage. The manor always smells like power and protection. Tonight, there’s something solemn woven in too. Like the house itself is holding its breath.

My mother finds me before I can march upstairs to change. “Everything’s arranged,” she says. Her tone is calm, but her eyes don’t release mine. She’s dressed in steel-blue satin trimmed in black lace, elegance touched by darkness. Her red-blonde hair is pinned up neatly, though a few strands curl low at her nape, wild and stubborn as ever. As much as I’ve looked up to my father, my mother has always been my person. The one person I could run to when life got too hard and I needed somewhere safe and soft to land.

Like the night when I made the choice to reject the young woman who was my goddess-blessed true mate.

“Your watch,” Fiona adds, and lifts her hand. I let her place it on my wrist, settling the weight like an offering. It’s my father’s old timepiece, simple and elegant. Its silver face catches the amber chandelier above our heads.

“How is she?” I ask, quiet but gruff.

She exhales, the sound soft and short. “Stunning. Angry. Quiet.”

My lips twitch. “That bad?”

“She and Lizzy haven’t burned anything down.”

“Yet.”

Mama lifts her gaze and pins me with it. Her eyes are quieter than usual. Tired, maybe. Knowing. “You’ve cornered a fox, Liam. Don’t be surprised if she bares her teeth.” She steps closer and adjusts the collar of my jacket. “Marriage and power are easy to confuse. But one, my son, is a weapon. The other is a promise.”

“And which do you think I used?”

She studies me for a long second. “You used your teeth when you should’ve led with your heart. But,” her voice softens, “you love her. That’s been obvious since that day you walked away from her ten years ago. You just don’t know how to love without bleeding.”

A bitter laugh catches in my throat. “I’ve never been good at anything clean.” Which is why, if I could go back in time, I’d still push Claire away that day when she told me she was in love with me. Her soul would have been tainted in blood and violence if I’d taken what I wanted, what she so freely fucking offered.

“No O’Reilly man has.”

She rests a palm flat against my shoulder, grounding me. “Tell her about Seth. She deserves that much. Her parents aren’t here to stop you anymore.”

My throat tightens. Of course she knows I never told Claire. Because she’s the one who convinced me not to break when they shut that door in my face. Because it was her hand that steadied me when I ached to wrap my arms around Claire at a funeral I could never attend. There’s little my mother doesn’t carry for me, whether I ask her to or not. “She’ll never forgive me.”

“If you ever want to truly win her heart, you need to try.”

I nod because I can’t reply. A few seconds pass. Then my mother reaches into her blazer, withdrawing a small black velvet pouch tied with a bit of crimson thread. She cradles it gently before pressing it into my hand as if it’s something fragile.

“What is it?” I ask, my voice rough with questions I don’t voice.

“A piece of your legacy,” she murmurs, brushing a hand along the edge of the pouch as I untie it. Inside, resting against soft black velvet, is a ring. Not a wedding band, but a signet notched with a marking older than our family crest. The iron set stone is rough-cut, a piece of obsidian etched with a wolf’s head surrounded by an unbroken circle.

“Your ancestral mark,” she says. “It passed through six generations of Alphas before your father. Always from father to eldest child on the night of their mating mark, if the match was recognized as fate-bound by the pack.”

I blink down at it. I’d only glimpsed it once, buried in a dusty portrait that hung in the hallway of my grandfather’s old study. A relic of the old world.

“How’s Da feeling?”

“He’s resting. He’ll rally for the ceremony, though,” she says softly. She taps the ring with a manicured nail. “He made a choice not to pass this to you the night your wolf recognized Claire. He didn’t want to cause you any more pain.”

I stare at the ring, heavy in my palm like a ghost finally demanding its reckoning.

She lifts her chin a fraction. My mother lowers her voice to just above a whisper. “If you’re going to walk through that arch and give her your name, then do it like an O’Reilly.” She leans in then, a glint of iron pride in her gaze. “Not just as a man hungry for redemption, but as a future Alpha who remembers what it means to serve before you lead.”

She squeezes my hand once, dusts her fingers against her skirt, and turns on her heel with a finality I’ve learned never to chase. I watch her climb the stairs, measured and proud, disappearing one step at a time. My guts are still twisted around the obsidian weight in my palm as I climb the stairs to my room.

After changing into my wedding tuxedo, I look down at the ring in my hand. The cold bite of the metal grounds something restless in my chest. Then I slide it onto the smallest finger on my right hand to carry it with me through the estate and then the back double doors as I step into the open-air courtyard behind the manor.

The garden courtyard has been transformed. Strings of golden light wind between wrought iron lamp posts and branches. Wildflowers line the simple aisle in asymmetrical clusters, lavender, bluebells, poppies, ripped from the pages of her favorite memories. Low music curls through the dusk air. At the altar, draped in linen and green vines braided in silver thread, I wait.

It’s not a grand stage, not gilded or overly ornate. Every detail is deliberate. I scrolled through every wedding inspiration board Claire ever made, even hacking her private ones, saved every color palette and floral arrangement, every candid post she liked from a wedding blogger seven years ago. I memorized the blues she lingered on, the candlelit courtyard settings that made her comment, the wildflower bouquets she reposted without irony. This ceremony isn’t mine. It’s hers. Or as close as I could build to the one she might’ve dreamed.

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