Page 138 of Lavender and Honey

They are so much smaller than I remember. Even my father, always standing too close, blocking the door until I agreed to one more family meal. I'm not angry, I'm sure of that. Angry is what happens when you're helpless. I have them exactly where I want them. I tell them, "I know what I'm doing."

"Do you really?" my mother says. "He's one of us, Lydia. AnAlpha." She makes it sound like a disease. I can see her straining to understand what possible angle I'm playing. "Do you think this is going to be any different? You think after you’re ‘officially’ theirs, that they’ll just let you—"

"Be happy?" I say, a smile growing on my lips as I look at Lucian who was watching my every move, "Yeah, I do."

She's on the verge of hysterics, caught between a growing disbelief and a lifetime of teaching me to be invisible. "Lydia, you have no idea—"

"Why would I go back toyou?" I say, turning my full attention to her, taking a couple steps to her as I talk, venting my emotions out for one last time, "So you can teach me morelessons?" The words have the bite of a laugh. "I don't want the life you're offering. I'm done running."

I'm speaking just to my parents now. It makes me feel bold. I think I should thank them, if anything. "That's what you wanted, isn't it? For me to really make up my mind?" I almost say I love them again, so my parents have no doubt that I mean it. Theones who matter already know, I think. I turn to Lucian, shock making him more real to me than ever.

Lucian stares as if I have taken away his voice, his eyes trying to keep up with the rest of him. He finds his feet, takes two hesitant steps in my direction, then another. I know I’ve startled him. All of them. Finn, Elias, and Soren each show a different kind of amazement, like I’ve just spun the world the other way around.

Lucian reaches me, searching my face, wanting to believe it. "Not like this," he says at last, breathless. "But yes."

He says the word as if tasting it, seeing how it feels on his tongue, how it feels inside his chest. I watch his mouth form the rest of the sentence: he would gladly mark me, yes. Yes, but not here, not while I'm flanked by parents with impossible demands. Yes, but not under these conditions, not when there's an ounce of doubt that this is really what I want. He is looking at me like I'm a ghost, like I could vanish in an instant if he says the wrong thing.

I think of all the ways I could misread him right now. Maybe the word has a secret end— an "until" or "unless" that will strike out every hope I've dared to entertain.

"But?" I ask, needing him to fill in the space around it.

His eyes are soft, bright with relief, with a thousand unsaid words that he will give to me, one at a time. "Yes," he says again. He looks at me for another moment before he finds more. "Just not like this."

"When, then?" I feel my heart thumping inside my chest, a relentless pressure building and expanding until he finally says—

"Inside our home," he says. "No one else around. No one else getting between us." Each phrase is its own small world. He takes a breath, makes the next words into something solid and alive. "It's too important, Lydia."

There's a lightness inside of me, an airiness spreading until it reaches my skin and makes me shiver with relief. He means it. He's stunned and amazed, but he means it. I should have known this was the answer. For Lucian, there is nothing more sacred than making a commitment this profound. It's more than a promise to him. It's something far deeper, unshakable, permanent. A claim and an oath all at once.

"But your parents," he says, glancing over my shoulder as if the wrong words could summon their disapproval like a curse. "They're hoping you'll change your mind."

"They'll be disappointed, then," I say. I want him to see my resolve. I want him to know this is the truest thing I've ever done.

Lucian's eyes stay on mine, watchful, like he's afraid someone might come and pull me away at the last second. He won't say it until he is sure, until there are no doubts left. He takes another breath and releases it slowly, like air into a glass.

He says, "I don't want to rush you into anything."

I almost laugh. I imagine grabbing his shoulders, shaking him with the urgency that I've held in check for too long. Rush? I've spent so much time wondering if he would wait, if he would let me come to him on my own. If anything, I've been slow. So slow, I fear I almost lost him.

The others look on in surprise, not just because of what I've said, but because he is who he is. They all think he’s the least impulsive of any of us. They've seen him hesitate, consider every angle. I want to say that I've already rushed this, and not in the way they think. I've rushed by waiting until it was almost too late.

Instead, I just tell him, "I want this. You have to know that."

He's already moving closer, closing the last distance between us. "You're really sure?" he says, the amazement in his voice like a note I've been desperate to hear.

"More than sure," I say. "Positive." I expect him to take my hands, to say more, but he just holds me in his gaze, a hundred plans blooming in the span of a heartbeat.

"Then as I said before, yes," he says, with the fullness of the word written in the way he looks at me.

I am bursting at the seams, wanting to pull him to me, but he just watches, careful and bright, waiting until I am finished and full. Then his face breaks into that rare grin, the one that makes his eyes crinkle and his voice sound even warmer.

“But as I said, not like this," he says. "For when I mark you as one of my pack, you won’t leave the house for a week." There was a pause as he looked at me with pure hunger in his eyes.

“Or longer,” he says, still smiling. “Depending on Finn, Elias, and Soren.” His laughter fills the space around us, stretching and warm, making it impossible to remember anything about this day but him. He draws me closer, everything about him steady and right, just like I dreamed he would be. Just like he promised.

He looks at the others. He knows they're as amazed as I am, but not for the same reasons. For them, this is just another surprise, another thing to figure out and adjust to. They were not counting the days, wondering if I'd ever come around. Wondering if I'd decide this was where I needed to be. They weren't holding their breath, knowing I'd come to my senses in the end.

But they know now, just like Lucian does, just like I do.

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