Page 295 of Golden Eagle

Then he walked down to meet his friend.

“Where’s Nik? He told me to wait here and said he was coming back, which he obviously isn’t.” Sue him if he sounded a bit petulant.

“He wanted to surprise you – he’s dearly sentimental at moments, your darling Nikita – and I’d say he’s succeeded.” He turned and offered his elbow. “Come, my dear, and I’ll take you to him.”

Sasha looped his arm through Val’s, and they started down the hill. “What kind of surprise?” His heart thumped.

“The good kind,” Val sang, his smile sly.

“You’re no fun.”

“Darling, I’mtoo muchfun, most of the time. Trust me: you’ll like it.”

They went down the hill, and hit the path – which had been shoveled, the snow-packed gravel easier walking than the knee-high snow had been. A fresh bank of clouds had rolled in, though the sun still shone in patches, and fresh, fat flakes began to sift down onto their heads.

The path went around the guest house, and opened up to a view of the iced-over pond, and the clear stretch of open field beside it…

Where everyone waited for them.

Everyone.

Val paused a moment, to let Sasha take it in.

There was Trina, and Lanny, and Jamie, and Kolya. Alexei, Dante, Severin. Mia, Fulk, Anna – and Steve, and Rachel, and Raymond, and Valerie, and Kolya Baskin, and Trina’s grandmother, and…

And there was Nikita. Waiting. In his black coat that Sasha had always liked so much, beneath the naked, twisting branches of the lone apple tree that stood at the center of the clearing. He held something, both hands cupped around it, and his eyes seemed very bright and blue-gray against the white backdrop of the snow.

There were snowflakes in his hair, Sasha noted, a bit numbly. Like there had been the day they met, in his mother’s kitchen.

Val leaned in close to whisper in his ear: “Sentimental, but also rather graceless.” He chuckled. “I told him to ask first, and not simply spring this upon you. Just like I told him there ought to be fairy lights, and garlands, and decorations. But he didn’t want to wait. And he wanted it to be simple, he said. Just the pack, and the snow. That was right, he said. And supper after, which, thankfully, the rest of us have managed to make quite grand, to make up for all his oversimplified tastes.”

“What are you talking about?” Sasha whispered back, but his gaze never left Nikita.

Because he thought…he hoped…that he knew.

Val patted his hand. “Come along, then.”

He towed Sasha through the two lines of their people, all gathered together, smiling hugely. Sasha wasn’t aware of moving his feet, but, somehow, he went the distance, and then Val was pulling his arm free, and Sasha was standing in front of Nik.

Nikita’s face had gone white with nerves, and the sight of it, the faint trembling in him, his snowflake-laden hair shivering against his forehead, propelled Sasha out of his own disbelieving fog.

“Hi,” he said, and reached for Nik’s hands.

“Hi,” Nik said back. He put a velvet box in Sasha’s palms, and then supported his hands with his own, his skin warm despite the way he was shaking. “If you don’t like them – or if you think it’s stupid – and Fulk said maybe you ought to wear yours on a chain around your neck, for when you shift…”

Sasha opened the box, and there were two rings inside, silver in color, white gold to touch, because they didn’t carry the spiritual heaviness he felt whenever he touched real silver.

“Oh.” The word left him on a punched-out breath.

“You let me bind you,” Nikita said, his voice rough. “And now I want to bind myself to you. This way. Will you marry me?”

Sasha tore his gaze from the rings, lifted his head, and locked gazes with him. Stark terror showed on Nik’s face. Doubt, fear of rejection.

Sasha tightened one hand on the box, and with the other reached up to touch Nik’s face, his jaw tight beneath his fingers. In Russian, he said, “I wanted you in my mother’s kitchen. And I’ve loved you since I looked up at you from the table where I was given the strength to save your life. You don’t even have to ask.”

Nikita leaned into his touch, eyes closing; tears slid down his cheeks, and Sasha brushed them away with careful fingers.

Val cleared his throat, quietly. He’d moved to stand beside them, directly under the tree. “The rings, please.”

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