Page 76 of Enchanted Shadows
She looked to me and took a shaky breath. “I thought you’d never ask.”
I threw my jacket off and rolled up my sleeves before pouring her a drink and setting it on the table.
She took it, bringing it up to smell.
I sat across from her. The woman with my ring on her finger.My wife.I put my glass out toward her. “To a happy marriage.”
She reached her own drink over and clunked it against mine. “For as long as it may last.”
CHAPTER 25
Iwasn’t all that surprised to find I woke to Kessara heading out of the cabin door in the morning. She hadn’t even stayed for a romantic breakfast for day one of our marriage. Yeah, zero surprised.
My neck was going to hurt like hell all day from sleeping on the couch. I wasn’t in my twenties anymore, so I was going to feel off for the next week. I slopped some healing ointment on in my bathroom before it got any worse. Was it capable of healing soreness and not scratches? Didn’t seem likely, but who was I to limit a healing ointment? I had to try something.
By the time I made it out to the training ring, the team had already arrived. Gone were the days of them being late, recently they had been beating me here.
All my thoughts of being proud of them vanished when they began clapping and whistling at me.
“General Raikes!” Sam yelled. “A prince and a married man.”
I grabbed at my neck. “Can all of youshut up?”
“Late to training the first day after his wedding because the marriage was hot, hot!”
As they giggled and cackled among themselves, Kessara offered with a smile, “Actually we just drank whiskey.”
“Lustyandboozy,” Sam clarified.
I groaned.
She stopped smiling to add, “We planned this. To beat the two of you out here, though we only succeeded on one front.”
“To make fun of us? How kind of you,” I stated.
“No,”Vivian snapped. “It’s a good story. You two late to training after your night together. Helps solidify the main ruse with a bunch of eyewitness accounts.”
I stilled.
“You did say to consider it our mission,” Sam reminded me.
“So I did.”
Wren shoved me toward my wife. Kessara’s dark hair was braided back just like her blonde always had been. “You two are leading the way this morning. Running together up front.”
I warned, “We’re still running double. Triple if anyone pisses me off.”
Molly gave me some sort of weird salute. “We know. We will do our best to keep the comments to a minimum.”
I began walking for the starting point, Kessara at my side. To her, I said, “Rude of you to skip out before I could make you breakfast in bed.”
She rolled her eyes.
We began running, the women splitting themselves into clumps of twos and threes behind us.
Our feet fell into a rhythm, and I adjusted easily to Kessara’s speed.
“Why do you smell funny?” she asked after a few minutes.
