Page 68 of Bullied Pretend Mate
Tugging her in close, I watch her giggle at the joke, feel her laughter under my fingers. After the rest of the tour is done, I stop and look her over, swallowing down my apprehension.
“Well?” I ask, “What’s the verdict? Go easy on me, because I already signed the lease. That was part of me stepping up, accepting more responsibility.”
“I love it,” she says, though I can tell she wanted to draw out this moment. She steps forward, throwing her arms around me. “And I know it’s cheesy to say, but I loveyou.”
“That’s great,” I force out, hands starting to shake from the nerves. It’s a silly thing because she and I are already mated, but I need her to say yes to this. “Because I think you’ll have to for this next part to go well.”
When I drop to my knee in front of her, she starts crying, just like in the movies.
“Maeve Villareal,” I whisper, knowing she’s going to love and hate that there’s nobody here to capture the moment. It’s another thing I took the gamble on, but since so much of her life is public, in front of the camera, I didn’t want to sacrifice this for it, too. “You are the love of my life. And, seeing as how we’re the world’s best wedding judges, I think it’s only fitting that we have one of our own. Will you marry me?”
She wipes the tears away from her face, sucks in a sharp breath, and jokes with a shaking voice, “I don’t know—I might have to check with my assistant—”
Shaking my head, I rise to my feet, wrapping my hand around the small of her back and drawing her into me, kissing her deeply in the middle of what is soon to be our new home.
“I think I’m your assistant,” I murmur against her lips, taking out the ring and sliding it on her finger. “And I say yes, so that settles it.”
“Okay,” she says, smiling tearily down at the ring on her finger. When she looks up at me, her eyes shine with unshed tears, and her cheeks are bright. I can see our entire future spreading out in front of us. “Yeah, that settles it.”
Epilogue - Maeve
“I thought they were already married,” I whisper to Felix, leaning in so he can hear me.
“They are, I think,” he whispers back. “This is, like, an official thing. As supreme and luna.”
We’re sitting in the center of the huge church on the edge of town, surrounded by shifters and humans alike. This place has always been more shifter than not, but the humans here know about us and end up going with the flow of our pack, attending events and working together after the fire.
Maybe that explains this very human wedding. Xeran Sorel, always networking, doing something to strengthen his ties with that population.
But Phina looks radiant and so, so happy, I’m not going to think about it too much.
When the ceremony is over, and we’re all walking over to the park just a block away from our new apartment, Felix leans down, whispering in my ear, “What marks do you give for location?”
“Well,” I say, laughing as a pair of kids run by us with sparklers in their hands. “I give full points for theme. This is a location very important to the happy couple, and as our viewers know, we value sentimentality over flashiness.”
“Is that so?” Felix asks, quirking an eyebrow at me. “Then would you tell the viewers why you’re so hung up on having an ice sculpture at our wedding?”
“Hey.” I swat at his arm, laughing when he scoops me up and pulls me into a kiss, making us into a big roadblock for the rest of the wedding procession coming down the road.“Ice sculpturesaresentimental for us. Weddings are part of our story.”
He makes a noise in the back of his throat and kisses me again, until someone swats him on the back of the neck.
“Not your wedding,” Soren says. “Clean it up, kids.”
“You’re just jealous because you’re here alone,” Felix says back, keeping his hand on my back as we turn and continue walking down Main Street together.
“No offense,” Soren says, rolling his eyes. “But you are never going to catch me making out in the middle of the street.”
“Just wait,” Felix says. “That’s what they all say.”
“Can’t believe they got you, too, man,” Soren says back, but there’s something almost sad in his voice. I stare at him, wondering if there’s any way I can dig into that, when he’s called away by Valerie and goes to help with some last-minute decorating in the park.
Everything is strung up with lights and white lace, and even though it’s just an everyday park in the middle of the town, they’ve done an amazing job getting it ready for the wedding. Heat lamps are on every corner and stopping point to help combat the early fall night, and Felix scoops up a party favor when we walk through the flowery arch. He opens the butter mints and offers me one.
“I think you’re supposed to take this when you leave,” I say.
“And who says we’re not leaving?” he asks, pulling me close to him and starting to sway us together, like a slow dance. Lowering his voice, he says, “Our apartment is close enough totasteMaeve-is, then I can get you alone—”
“That’s not my name,” I laugh at him, at the same time someone else swats Felix and he rubs the back of his head, muttering, “Really?” while Phina says, “This is not your wedding, Rana.”
