River Marked

Samuel held me back as the foyer emptied until it was just us, Jesse, and Darryl—and the organ began to play Wagner.

Jesse, on Darryl’s arm, led the procession toward the mouth of the sacrament hall. She paused there, to let my sisters Nan and Ruthie, who’d evidently been hiding just inside the chapel doors where I couldn’t see them, lead the way, escorted by Warren and Ben, another of Adam’s wolves.

At the front of the chapel, Adam waited for me next to the minister.

I blinked back tears, sniffed—and Samuel dropped my arm.

I looked over to see what he was doing, but another man had taken his place.

“Zee wanted to have the honor of giving you away,” said Bran, Samuel’s father, the Marrock who ruled all the wolves anywhere I was likely to ever go, and the Alpha of the Montana-based wolf pack who had raised me. “But I had prior claim.”

“They argued for a good while,” Samuel whispered. “I thought there would be blood on the floor.”

I glanced in the church and realized that a lot of the Montana pack I’d grown up with were here. Charles, Samuel’s brother, sitting next to his mate, smiled at me. Charles seldom if ever smiled.

About that time, humiliatingly, I started to cry.

Bran leaned closer as we walked slowly, and said in a bare whisper that didn’t carry beyond us, “Before you start feeling overwhelmed by how nice we all are to do this for you, you really should know a few things. It all started with a bet …”

When we lined up in the front of the church, as smoothly as if we’d practiced it, Bran was right: I wasn’t overwhelmed anymore. Nor was I crying. Nan, Ruthie, and Jesse stood on my side of the church, along with Bran, who still had my hand. Darryl, Warren, and Ben lined up on the other side, next to Adam.

My mother, the traitor seated in the front row of pews, sent my stepfather up to pin a silk Monarch butterfly on my bouquet. He kissed my cheek, exchanged a nod with Bran, then sat back down at my mother’s side. My mother gave me a delighted smile and looked nothing at all like the nefarious plotter she was.

“Balloons,” I mouthed at her, raising an eyebrow to show what I thought of her subterfuge.

She discreetly pointed up—and there, clinging to the ceiling, were dozens of gold balloons with silk butterflies tied to the strings.

At my side, Bran laughed—no doubt at my dumbfounded expression.

“Like the fae,” he murmured, “your mother doesn’t lie. Just leads you where she wants you to go willy-nilly, all for your own good. If it helps, you are not alone; she came to me with a coyote pup to raise, and look what happened to me. At least you don’t owe her a hundred dollars.”

“Serves you right for betting against my mother,” I told him, as the music drew to a close, and he led me across to Adam.

Bran stopped just short, pulled me back against him, and frowned at Adam—and let the weight of his authority be felt throughout the chapel. Bran could disguise what he was, and he usually did so, appearing as a wiry-muscled young man of no particular importance. Every once in a while, though, he let the reality of what he was out. Bran was an old, old wolf and powerful. He ruled the wolves in our part of the world, and no one in this room, not even the humans, would wonder that he could make Alpha wolves obey him. The organ music faltered under the weight of it and stuttered to a halt.

“Pup,” he said into the sudden silence, “today, I’m giving you one of my treasures. You see that you take proper care of her.”

Adam, not visibly cowed, nodded once.“I’ll do that.”

Then the threat of what Bran was disappeared, and he became once more an unremarkable young-looking man in a nicely cut gray tux.“She’ll turn your life upside down.”

Adam smiled and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother fan her face—Adam cleans up very nicely and, in a tux, is breathtaking even without the smile.

“She’s been doing that this past ten years, sir,” he said. “I don’t imagine it will change anytime soon.”

Bran let me step forward, and Adam took my hand.

“Have you lost any money lately?” I whispered.

“Do I look stupid?” he whispered back, raising my hand to his lips. “I have to sleep sometime. I didn’t know about this until your mom called me at my hotel after she gave you the butterfly call. She apparently has been talking to Jesse for a couple of weeks. You and I were the last to know.”

I stared at him, then looked at the mirthful gaze of Pastor Arnez. Have to wait for a funeral, indeed.

“I didn’t bet anything, either,” the pastor whispered to me.

“Most people,” said Adam thoughtfully—and loud enough that even the audience members without preternatural gifts could hear him—“have surprise birthday parties. You get a surprise wedding.”

And, almost as if they were coached—which at least a dozen people later assured me was not the case—they all shouted,“Surprise!”

In the brief silence that followed, one of the helium balloons popped and its remains, including a silk butterfly, fell down to the floor behind the minister. If it was an omen, I had absolutely no idea what it meant. *

THERE WAS AN IMPRESSIVE ARRAY OF FOOD AND drink in the church basement, and I took the opportunity to corner my little sister Nan.

“How come you got to elope, and I get a surprise wedding?” I asked her.

She gri

“Ick,” I told her.

She shrugged.“Hey, at least I didn’t lick my fingers first. Besides, it’s good frosting, a pity to waste it. And, in answer to your question,I eloped before Mom and my new mother-in-law killed each other. A surprise wedding like this would have left bodies on the ground. You got a surprise wedding because Mom, Bran, and … a few others were feeling guilty.”

“Guilty,” I said. “You have to have a conscience to feel guilt. I don’t think Mom is capable of it.”

Nan giggled.“You might be right. The bet thing wasn’t our fault anyway; it’s yours.”

I raised my eyebrows in disbelief.“My fault?”

“It started when we all noticed that you would get this—this deer-in-the-headlights look on your face as we discussed the wedding, and we started to play you a little because it was pretty much impossible to resist.”

Therehad been a few commiserating phone calls from my sister. I narrowed my eyes at her, and she flushed guiltily.

“The bet just sort of happened,” she continued. “One day, Dad said, ‘Ten to one she bolts with Adam before you get to the wedding date.’ ”

“Dad was in on it?” I seldom called my stepfather “Dad.” Not that I didn’t adore him—but I’d been sixteen when I first met him, though he and Mom had been married for almost twelve years at that point. I started calling Curt by his first name and never got in the habit of calling him anything else.

“Ofcourse not.” My youngest sister, Ruthie, trotted up with a cookie in one hand. Nan, tall and soft-featured, took after her father; Ruthie was a miniature of Mom. Which meant she was tiny, gorgeous, and pushy. “Dad was appalled at what he’d started. Nan, Mom, and I all were the first to bet, but Bran gotin on it pretty early on.”

She casually snagged a glass of punch off the table, and I snagged it out of her hands and put it back.

“Not twenty-one yet,” I told her.

“Next month,” she whined.

I smirked at her.“You bet on my wedding. You don’t get any favors.” I straightened up. I had a sudden, delightful idea. “Wolves,” I said, and reinforced my call with a touch on the pack bonds I was only just getting the hang of. I didn’t have to speak loud, either. All over the church the wolves, all wearing their human faces, perked up and turned toward me. “My sister Ruthie isn’t twenty-one yet. No alcohol for her.” Then, in case she didn’t get it, I told her, “You go anywhere near that punch or any other alcohol today, my wolves are going to interfere.”