Page 43 of Pack Witch
“Ask Bo. I’m not your Alpha,” I said gruffly, though I was trying not to laugh. Bo was halfway to the trees already.
“Bo?” Leroy shouted. “Bo, don’t leave me behind!”
“Catch up then!”
The two of them were out of earshot before Zinnia and I could stop laughing long enough to assure them their lives weren’t in danger. “It’s just Ida,” Zinnia told me with a chuckle.
Ida arrived an hour later, her arms filled with baskets full of food. When she saw Zinnia and me standing together, the frown she’d been wearing dropped away. She dropped the baskets under the birches. “Thank the moon,” she choked out.
“Thank the earth, too,” I replied, grabbing the food and carrying it to the table outside the cabin. The two women vanished inside, Ida peppering Zinnia with questions. I could almost make out their entire conversation, though my hearing was far less keen than it had been. Than my wolf’s had been.
Hearing Ida come out of the cabin, I met her troubled gaze as she approached the table. She laid a soft hand on my arm, taking in the altered markings there. “It worked.”
“It did.”
Her voice caught as she murmured, “If I’d known she was yours, if she’d told me who she’d been following, I could have helped you find each other.”
I smiled. “You did. Just in time.”
Her hug was equal parts softness and strength, but when she pulled back, her eyes were watering. “Your wolf. I’m so sorry for your…” The wordlosshung in the air, but I shook my head, trying to find a way to explain how I felt.
There was grief, of course. But so much more.
While I fought for words, Zinnia emerged from the cabin and ducked under my arm. A slow, molasses-like current of energy slid into me from all the places our skin touched, strengthening me and chasing away the sadness.
I kissed the top of her head where a few flowers were still twining among the strands from that morning. Smiling at my old friend, I spoke the simple truth. “I have no regrets. I had a choice to sacrifice an old life for the chance to step into a new one with my mate. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
We ateand talked until fireflies began to dot the evening air around us, and the moon rose above the mountains beyond the pines. Bo and Leroy kept us all laughing, Ida had them professing their undying devotion when she pulled out a second cherry-almond pie, and Zinnia smiled more than she had since we met.
Of course, that may have had something to do with the homemade gin she’d brought out from the cabin.
Ida finished another glass of her own and winked at me, then scowled at my mate. “So, are you going to make an honest male of our Sergeant, then?”
Zinnia blinked, and the fireflies around her all copied her movement. “What do you mean?”
Ida made a disgruntled noise, leaning forward to pour some more gin. “You know very well.”
Zinnia’s voice shook as she began, “Ida, you know our wolves are…”
“Together with the moon. But you’re both still here with us. There’s a mating ceremony for every occasion, and if you want one, I know my boy Brand would love to officiate.” Zinnia and I stared at each other as Ida went on. “I’d love to introduce you to the rest of the pack when you’re ready, and that seems like a good way to do it. With a celebration, maybe on the full moon? I’m sure I can throw together a decent party by then.”
A party. A celebration. Not a mating, as we weren’t exactly shifters anymore. We couldn’t bond with bites like wolves.
“You mean, like a… human wedding?” I asked. “Would you like that, Zinnia Star? Would you marry me?”
Zinnia was biting her lip, the fireflies around her head flickering faster by the second. All around her feet, night-blooming flowers sprang up and started to bloom.
She didn’t need to speak to answer my question, but she did. “I will, Julian Rain.”
Chapter 23
Zinnia
TWO WEEKS LATER
For years, I’d thought I wanted quiet. I’d convinced myself I loved it.
It had felt safer to hold still and keep apart from the rest of the world, if I wanted to stay alive. But the morning of my wedding was noisy and raucous, and even if I had to draw on the steady power of the earth for peace in the middle of it all, I felt more alive than I ever had.
