Page 117 of Turn That River Red

When I glance sideways at Charlotte, she has her hands squeezed up to her chest, her eyes as big as saucers. “You two are socute,” she whispers. “I have to tell Edie.”

Edie, the other human woman in love with a Hunter, also wasn’t what I expected when I met her.

Ambrose makes a kind of grumbling sighing noise and raps against the door. “That’s all I wanted to hear,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.”

“You will,” I tell him.

“He is such a softie,” Charlotte says, tapping on her phone. “I hope he fucking heard me say that, by the way”

I roll my eyes, but if Ambrose does hear it, he doesn’t respond—although the front door of the beachside hotel clicks shut.

I always dreamed of getting married in a church, but that was just from growing up in the Church of the Well. I didn’t know there was any other way to get married, not really. When Ambrose asked me if I wanted a beach wedding, a little over a month ago, the idea shimmered like a diamond. I hadn’t been to a beach since before my parents died, but I remember going when I was a child: the salty wind and rhythmic rush of the waves and the cries of seabirds.

He asked me after he had been gone for a few days to help Charlotte take care of something with her half-brother Rowan, leaving me alone not in the ranch house near Cocana but in a pretty Victorian house along the border, where he took me after the hunt in the desert. We’ve been living there since, and I thought we’d get married in the big backyard, beneath a cathedral of orange trees. But when he came back from his trip, he had another idea.

So that’s how we ended up here, in a little seaside town in South Texas called Rosado. It’s not much, but when I saw the waves cresting against the pale sand, I knew this was where I wanted to get married: holding Ambrose’s hand by the sea.

“Okay.” Charlotte slips her phone in her pocket. “Edie says everything’s good to go down on the beach. Let’s just finish getting you ready.”

Charlotte pulls me back over to the vanity, settling me down on the seat. She’s been helping me for the last two hours—doing my makeup so my eyes look big and bright, pulling my hair back in a complicated bun that looks nothing like the braids I had to wear at the Church of the Well. We bonded over those braids because her mom used to wear them.

“Here you go.” Charlotte pins the veil into my hair. She made it herself, out of fresh roses and a long trail of organza silk. When it’s situated, she steps back, and all I can see in the mirror is myself, looking like the bride I never thought I’d be.

“If Ambrose ever fucks up,” Charlotte says. “You come find me. Jaxon and I will get it sorted. He doesn’t scare us.”

I glance over my shoulder at her, flush with warmth. I know I don’t know herwell, but she’s more protective of me than anyone I’ve ever met other than Ambrose. Edie, too. They’re like a family, the five of them, and they welcomed me so easily that I realized I never really understood what a family was before now.

“He’s not going to fuck up,” I say. “But thanks for the offer.”

Charlotte grins and pulls me back up to my feet. “You ready?”

I nod.

She leaves the bedroom first, making a show of checking for Ambrose as if he might be lurking around to get an early peek at me. He’s not, though. When it’s clear, she gestures for me to join her, and we go out into the open walkway, the breeze warm and balmy. It’s early September, still warm enough for a beach wedding in Texas, but out of season so that Rosado and its beach are mostly abandoned. Plus, Charlotte’s half-brother Rowan runs the hotel, and he apparently made sure everything is empty just for us.

Charlotte taps out something on her cell phone, then nods when it dings. “All right,” she says. “Ambrose is where he needs to be. Edie says you’re good to make your entrance.”

I smooth down my skirt. I’m not nervous about marrying Ambrose—nothing feels more right to me—but I am nervous about the wedding itself, even though hardly anyone is here. I’m not used to being the center of attention.

“Come on.” Charlotte loops her arm in mine, and we take the stairs to the hotel’s courtyard, walking together past the glittering swimming pool and out to the rickety boardwalk that leads to the beach. I can’t see anything, just mounds of vine-covered dunes and the glassy water glimmering in the distance.

“You ready?” Charlotte asks.

“Ready,” I say.

Together, she and I walk down the boardwalk. I neverdreamed about being given away at my wedding—I don’t have a father to do it. But Charlotte volunteered and said it made sense since we had both escaped the Church of the Well. I agreed.

There’s no music, just the rhythmic swell of the ocean. Charlotte and I crest over the dunes, and I see what Edie and Charlotte’s boyfriend Jaxon have been working on for the first time:

An altar made out of driftwood and flowers and antlers and animal bones. Jaxon stands in front of it, Ambrose at his side. The altar is beautiful and strange, but when I see Ambrose, he’s all I can see—especially as his eyes drink me in, making me feel like I’m the only human in the world.

Charlotte laughs. “Oh, he’s down bad.”

I blush and focus on walking down the aisle that Edie and Jaxon created out of stones and seashells. She’s sitting in a folding chair next to Sawyer, her Hunter boyfriend. Rowan is there, too, big and hulking as he watches silently from the back row. Another Hunter, like Charlotte. He has a date with him, a dark-haired woman named Abi who curls her fingers protectively around his hand.

But all I care about is Ambrose.

Charlotte guides me across the beach, the wind whipping my dress and veil out behind me. When we reach the altar, she looks Ambrose dead in the eyes and says, “Don’t fuck this up.”

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