Page 81 of Accidentally Wedded To A Werewolf

He laughed. She laughed with him, wondering why it felt so difficult. Thingsweren’tdifficult with Hector, that was the whole point of him. He made everything easy.

“I can’t believe you stayed here,” he admitted. “I expected you to bribe him to follow you to a resort. Somewhere that actually has room service. Someplace with STUFF TO DO!”

“We have stuff,” Luna argued. “We havea fair!”

“Yeah! Yes, great!” He clapped hard enough that Vida jumped, although that might have been from a loud song starting, headphones forgotten around her neck.

“Fair,” Hector continued. “Awesome. So much hard work. Sucks you won’t get to see it. You guys will send pics, right?”

Uncle Roy grunted again. For a good five seconds, it was the only sound at the table except for Vida’s fork scraping a burned piece of skin off a baked potato.

Hector looked at Luna expectantly.

“Right,” Luna said. She prepped her cutest smile. “About that!”

Hector chuckled uncertainly. “It’s the day before the wedding, babe.”

“I know! I just think it would be fun!” Luna batted her eyes at him and slid a finger under his watch strap. “Games, chocolates?—”

“A day fair in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska,” he said over her. Then he winced, eyebrows shooting up as he realized how that had sounded. He shot the table a reassuring grin. “I mean, hey, totally! I bet it will be super fun! I just— We have a lot of things booked.”

Luna sighed, propping her chin up in her hand. “Like what?”

He stared at her. Trying to see if she was joking, she realized. Hazy memories swam back through the flood of admin she’d been doing for Claw Haven, but before she could say them, Hector was telling her instead.

“That hot stone spa,” he reminded her. “With that state-of-the-art mud treatment? So we look peak hot forwedding pics. Their waitlist is a year, and you registered us the second we got engaged. It’s one of the reasons we booked the wedding in Bali.”

“Right,” Luna said. “No, yeah, I remember.”

She stared down at her plate, reeling. How could she have forgotten? She had that spa treatment circled on her calendar at home. Part of her—the part that had to discover a whole new range of skin products and subpar water pressure for her showers—longed for the glowing stress release that the pamphlet had promised. Then she thought back to Oliver’s hands on her back, kneading the oil that Luna bought from the skincare shop in town, which worked shockingly well. His hot skin against her shoulders, working out her knots as the bond flared happily between them?—

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” Luna said.

She looked cute, even when she was white-knuckling the sink. Luna tried to be gratified as she stared into her reflection, trying to dig up some semblance of relief. She was seeing her fiancé again! She should be over the moon! What waswrongwith her?

Someone knocked on the bathroom door.

Luna’s heart spasmed. It only took a moment to remind herself that the bond in her chest wasn’t getting any warmer, so it couldn’t be Oliver.

She opened the door. Hector stood there, hands in his pockets, oddly bashful. Itdidn’t suit him.

“Hey,” he said. “You feeling okay? That steakwaspretty rare.”

“They cook it more for us,” Luna said faintly. She dragged up a winning smile. “I’m fine! I’m good. I’m just—I’m really busy with the fair, and everything.”

He nodded. He looked mystified like he was still expecting her to throw up a pair of jazz hands and reveal it was all a joke. She could see how much he wanted her to go back to her regular self—careless and fun-seeking, always looking for the next party or spa treatment or adventure, as long as she got to go home with him at the end and laze around in their luxurious sheets. He’d come here expecting her to throw herself into his arms, and why shouldn’t she? She should be clamoring to get out of here. To get back to her old life.

It was tempting. Luna could feel her old habits coming back: the urge to brush anything serious aside in favor of fun and excitement. Then she remembered Oliver, his voice low and true.Nobody’s fun all the time.

“You were kind of weird back there,” Luna said in a rush. “With Oliver.”

He laughed again. It dimmed fast when she didn’t join in. To his credit, he looked genuinely surprised. “What? It was a joke. Okay, probably not the best move to say it in front of his whole fam, that was my bad. I just…”

“Got jealous?” Luna asked. She tried to throw in a giggle, something cute and airy to break the tension. It came out more as a wheeze, and she had to cough to hide it.

He hesitated. “Babe. I don’t care who you have sex with. As long as you come home to me.”

Luna squinted at him. “Your tone’s weird. What’s with the weirdness?”

---