Chapter Six

Chapter Six

POV: Sera Ashwood

I got to Damien's house and knocked three times and got absolutely nothing back.

I stood there for a moment and looked at the door and knocked again because maybe he did not hear me the first time and still nothing, but the door was not fully closed, it was sitting slightly open the way doors sit when someone forgot to pull it all the way behind them, and I pushed it gently with two fingers and it swung inward and I stepped into the doorway and stopped dead.

There were flowers everywhere. White ones, the expensive kind that did not grow in this territory naturally, arranged along every surface I could see from the entrance, petals scattered deliberately across the floor leading deeper into the house, candles lit along both walls even though it was the middle of the day, and the whole thing had a deliberate careful quality to it that made absolutely no sense because Damien did not know I was coming here today.

He did not know.

So who exactly had he done all of this for?

I stood in that doorway and felt my dramatic brain kick into the highest gear it owned and I thought, what if this is not for me at all, what if I just walked into something that has nothing to do with me and now I am standing in this man's decorated house like an uninvited guest at someone else's celebration and when he comes back he is going to find me here looking absolutely insane.

Or worse.

What if this is a trap?

I took one step back and looked at the flowers again and thought, Sera, you are the Veilborn, you are the most politically significant being in the entire werewolf world right now, and you just walked through an unlocked door into a decorated house because you were curious, and if someone wanted to assassinate you this is exactly the kind of setup they would use, flowers and candles and a door left conveniently open, and you just walked straight into it like you had never heard of consequences in your entire life.

I was genuinely reconsidering my entire decision to come here without telling anyone where I was going when a voice split the silence from somewhere deeper in the house and nearly sent me straight out of my skin.

"Say yes, say yes, say yes, PLEASE!"

I spun around so fast I nearly knocked one of the flower arrangements off the table beside me and there was Lyra, standing in the middle of the room with both hands clasped in front of her chest and her face doing something so dramatically hopeful it belonged in a performance, and behind her, on one knee on the petal scattered floor with a small wooden box open in his hand, was Damien.

I stared at him.

I stared at Lyra.

I stared back at him.

"What," I said, "is happening right now?"

"Say yes first," Lyra said immediately.

"Lyra what are you doing in this man's house?"

"Sera, I will explain everything, just say yes first, oh!"

Damien was still on his knee, looking up at me with that steady expression he always wore, not performing the moment, not rushing it, just waiting for me the way he always waited, and he said quietly, "I wanted to do this properly. You deserved it properly."

Something in my chest did a thing I was not prepared for.

"How did you even know I was coming today?" I said, because my brain needed an answer before my heart made any decisions. "I did not tell you I was coming. I did not tell anyone I was coming."

"He called me," Lyra said, stepping forward with that smile she wore when she was extremely pleased with herself. "He called me this morning and told me he wanted to surprise you and I was supposed to go and bring you here but clearly you saved me the journey because here you are standing in the middle of his front room looking like you have seen a ghost."

"I thought it was a trap," I said.

Lyra blinked. "A trap."

"There were flowers everywhere and the door was open and nobody answered when I knocked and I am the Veilborn, Lyra. People have been trying to negotiate my existence since the morning after my ceremony, so yes, my first thought was a trap, that is a completely reasonable first thought."

Lyra turned to Damien with an expression that said she was going to be telling this story for years.

"She thought your proposal was an assassination attempt," she said.

Damien looked at me from his position on the floor with something moving behind his eyes that was very close to the kind of laughter a person swallows when they are trying to remain respectful of the moment.

"Sera," he said, still on his knee, still holding the box open, still completely unhurried about the whole thing. "Will you be my bride?"

I looked at him down there on that petal covered floor that he had decorated for me specifically, that he had called my best friend to help him with because he wanted it to be right, that he had planned without knowing exactly when I would come but had faith that I would, and I thought about my morning, about lying on that ceiling staring at the bed, about Kael's face in the clearing, about the hollow aching space where the mate bond used to sit fully, and I thought about how this man had never once looked at me like I was a resource or a power or a problem to be managed.

"Yes," I said. "Obviously yes, get up off that floor."

Lyra screamed.

I am not exaggerating, she screamed, grabbed both my arms and shook me slightly, and launched into a celebration so immediate and so loud that two of the candles flickered from the force of it, and Damien stood up and the smile on his face was the slow real kind and I held onto that, I held onto the realness of it, because after the morning I had survived I needed something that felt genuinely uncomplicated.

The three of us sat together for the next hour with sweet wine and the good bread Lyra had somehow produced from somewhere and the kind of laughter that fills a room completely, and somewhere in the middle of it I told them about Reuel showing up at my house before sunrise with his formal robes and his white flowers and his speech about genuine connection.

Lyra put her cup down very slowly.

"He did what?" she said.

"He came to seek my hand," I said. "Formal gifts and everything."

"Reuel Ashton," she said. "The same Reuel Ashton who made your second year at the academy a living nightmare came to your house this morning to seek your hand in marriage."

"He said people change."

Lyra looked at me for a long moment and then she said, "Please tell me you destroyed him."

"I told him to suit himself and walked out."

"That is it?" She grabbed my arm. "Sera!"

"He grabbed my wrist on the way out," I said. "I snatched it back hard enough that he stumbled and then I left him standing there."

Lyra sat back with the expression of someone who was fully satisfied with that outcome and raised her cup in my direction and said, "Good. That is exactly what he deserved and more."

Damien was watching me with that quiet attentive expression of his and I felt his eyes on the side of my face and turned to look at him and he said simply, "Nobody grabs your wrist."

Three words. Said so quietly and so certainly that something about them landed differently than they should have.

I looked at him and nodded and said, "Nobody grabs my wrist."

We had a mating ceremony to plan now. I was going to focus on that. I was going to focus on this room and these people and this uncomplicated warmth and I was absolutely not going to think about the fact that somewhere across the territory Kael Dravon was sitting in his Alpha house with his chosen Luna and had no idea that Seraphine Ashwood had found someone who showed up for her properly.

On his knees and everything.

The irony of that was not lost on me at all.