“It’s not that I don’t want to stay with you,” I say, finally. “I just think that it’s a good idea for me to stay here alone until the ceremony before I fully shift into my new life. I’ll still come up to the house during the day, but I need to take a few nights over the next couple of weeks to say goodbye to who I used to be.”
Maybe what Romulus said to me the other night has taken hold.
There’s so little left of my life to hold on to, I want to make sure I don’t end up with any regrets.
“Take as long as you need then,” Marlowe says, nudging both of his brothers until they agree as well, even though I can tell they still don’t fully understand. “You know that we’re right here if you need us.”
“Thanks,” I say with a smile.
“I think you’re just afraid that we’ll seduce you before the wedding ceremony,” Kaleb teases as he gives me a hug. When he pulls back, he has a more serious expression, and I know he’s thinking about the consequences of that. I have to be a virgin for the turning ceremony. If it weren’t for that little fact, we would’ve given in where that’s concerned a long time ago.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” he says after a second.
“Definitely then,” I say, laughing.
Marlowe looks more serious than the other two. “You’ll stay inside the cabin though, right?”
“I mean, I might want to take some walks in the woods and maybe a swim in the river,” I say, waiting for their reaction as Marlowe’s face frowns with concern and he gets ready to open his mouth to argue with me about wandering off on my own.
“I’m teasing,” I say. “Yes, I’ll stay inside the cabin, with the exception of having to use the outside bathroom and shower.”
“See now, why wouldn’t you just want to come stay at the house where there’s a claw-footed bathtub?” Marlowe says in frustration. It isn’t like him to be this argumentative. But then again … all of us are on edge. Now that the ceremony is moving forward, news will eventually spread about what we’re doing.
The closer the date comes, the more dangerous it’ll become. For all of us.
“She’ll be fine,” Rory says as he gives Marlowe a hearty pat on the back. But even he has a hard time keeping the concern from his expression when he adds, “Just be careful. Romulus doesn’t think those errant shifters will be back on our land any time soon, but if they were willing to trespass once …”
“Don’t worry,” I reassure them. “I’ll be fine. You know me. I already learned how to handle myself once.”
The reminder of the time they left me once before shuts them up.
“Besides,” I say, giving each one of them a kiss to soften the sudden tension. “I know you’ll be there, just at the top of the hill.”
After the guys leave, I crawl up into my loft to look out the window at the night sky. There is a definite peace in the solitude of being completely alone. I need it sometimes. I need to be able to hear my own thoughts and find my own voice, even if I am only talking to myself.
Otherwise, the opinions of everyone else starts to blur my mind.
I flip over onto my back and stare up at the painted moon and stars on my ceiling. I could have abandoned this place in favor of the now empty bedroom down below, but I couldn’t bring myself to.
Aside from the boys, this is the only place that is mine.
Now they are home, but for a while still … this is too.
The next day I spend mostly reading up in the loft. The air outside is cool, so I open the window and let it blow the pages of my book gently as I read more about shifter rituals.
I skim a few books that I borrowed from the house and brought back to the cabin with me, looking for things about wolf shifter wedding ceremonies and then letting my curiosity get ahead of myself as I look for anything I can find about mating and how that sort of thing will work out with three mates instead of just one.
I mean, aren’t wolves territorial? Or maybe that only applies to wolf packs and not individuals within the same one. The whole thing starts to boggle my mind and make me feel a bit claustrophobic inside the small loft. Lydia did say that much of shifter culture is unwritten, but I wish they’d taken the time to write just a little more of it down.
It’d certainly have come in handy.
By mid-afternoon, I decide to go for a walk in the woods even though I told the guys that I would stay inside the cabin. Surely, I think, they only meant at night. Not here in the middle of the day when they’re practically within earshot.
I pull on a soft sweater and climb down the ladder from the loft and head out the door. It’s later than I thought. It’s just about dusk and so the air is filled with the sweet scent of wildflowers that carry on the evening breeze. The colors of the approaching sunset cause the shadows between the trees to look as if they’re playing with each other. They’re not sinister tonight, as they once were.
As I walk along the edge of the forest path, I think about a very trivial and very human thing; what I want to wear to my wedding. My wedding.
The very thought of it both makes my heart race and my stomach clench. I never thought I’d be married this young. That one moment I’d be arriving here in North Port, running away from my own father, and that what feels like the very next I’m planning a wedding.