Chapter 336: You Having Tummy Problems, Bro?
The Moon Goddess had a sense of timing that bordered on cruelty. Gavriel Sterling had been bracing for this since the visions started because the ancestors had already told him what happened. But the longer the visions went, the more uneasy he felt. What he didn’t expect was for it to happen like this.
The corridor darkened for a fraction of a second as two figures appeared at the entrance.
Then the wind shifted.
It came from the sea, sweeping across the courtyard and up the aisle, carrying with it every scent in the corridor behind the entrance, and the scent that reached the front of the courtyard was white roses and salt air and something underneath both of those things, something warm and clean and ancient that had no name in any language Lucian Moon spoke and every name in the language his blood recognized.
Lucian stiffened.
The shift was total and instantaneous. Every muscle in his body locked. His pupils blew wide, the black swallowing the color until his eyes were dark pools reflecting the afternoon light. His shoulders went rigid. His jaw clamped. A low, involuntary rumble built in his chest, a sound too deep for the guests to hear but close enough for Tristan to feel it through the air between them.
His wolf surged so hard his vision split.
Every compass inside Lucian Moon, every instinct that had spent twenty years pointing quietly at a girl he had never been permitted to reach for, detonated. The scent filled his lungs and his lungs refused to release it, holding the air the way a drowning man holds a rope, and the wolf inside his chest hit the walls of his control with a force that should have dropped him.
Mate.
The word tore through him with the weight of a verdict delivered by a god who had been silent for two decades and had chosen this, this exact second, to finally speak.
Mate. MATE. She is OURS.
Lucian couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything except stand at the front of a bonding ceremony for his best friend and feel the floor of his entire life give way beneath him.
Tristan turned his head. He looked at Lucian the way you look at a friend whose face has gone a color that suggests a medical event.
Gavriel’s chest ached watching.
He knew what this was because the ancestors had told him, because the vision had shown him, because the grief in his current body was the same grief wearing a different suit: Lucian’s soul had been fated to hers. Across lifetimes. The first thread ever woven between souls, the ancestors had said. A gift from the Gods. He didn’t understand the difference between that and the fae bond he kept hearing Tristan reference, but something told him it was deeper.
"You having tummy problems, bro?" Tristan asked.
Lucian didn’t answer.
His eyes were locked on the corridor entrance. His chest was rising and falling in a rhythm that had abandoned anything resembling normal respiration. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to move, to cross that aisle, to reach the source of the scent before the rational part of his brain could stop him, and the rational part of his brain was losing the argument.
Tristan frowned. "Lucian. Did the shots hit you wrong? You look like you swallowed a live fish."
Lucian didn’t answer.
Tristan’s frown deepened. Then dissolved entirely, because his eyes left Lucian’s face and found the corridor entrance, and the woman standing there emptied his mind of every thought he had ever had or would ever have.
River.
She was in white. All of it, head to hemline, a gown that caught the light and held it the way her hair held light, as if the fabric had been woven with the understanding that the woman wearing it would outshine it and had made peace with its supporting role. Her white hair was down, curled in loose waves that fell past her shoulders and moved with the sea breeze, threaded with white roses that sat against the curls like they had grown there. Her pink eyes were bright, luminous, carrying the glow that surfaced when the magic inside her could feel the magnitude of the moment.
Atlas walked beside her. The Fae King’s arm was linked with hers, his posture carrying the particular gravity of a father delivering his daughter to a man who had earned her. His face gave nothing away. His eyes gave everything.
She started down the aisle.
Every person in the courtyard turned. Gasps rippled through the rows, the particular sound of a crowd encountering beauty they were inadequately prepared for, and River absorbed the attention the way she absorbed everything: with composure, with grace, and with the quiet, stubborn refusal to acknowledge that an entire courtyard had just lost its collective breath because of her.
She saw Tristan.
Her composure cracked. The princess dissolved. The girl on the rock surfaced, the girl who had laughed at a stupid face and squeezed a boy’s hand in a training yard and punched him in the stomach for a scroll, and the smile that broke across her face was so full and so bright that Tristan made a sound in the back of his throat that was audible to everyone in the first three rows.
Atlas delivered her to the front. He placed her hand in Tristan’s, and the transfer carried the weight of a king who had watched a ten-year-old boy with mud on his boots ask to keep a nameless girl, and had spent every year since watching the boy earn the right to.
Atlas stepped back. Sat. Folded his hands in his lap. The fraction of shine in his eyes was visible only to Gavriel, who was standing at an angle no living person occupied.
The officiant began.
"We gather before the Gods and the light of Aelindris to witness the bonding of Prince Tristan Aelindor and Princess River Aelindor, by the grace of the crown and the blessing of the divine."
Lucian stood at Tristan’s right. He was breathing through his mouth because breathing through his nose would bring the scent back and the scent would finish what it had started, and his wolf was slamming against his control with a violence that was going to leave bruises on the inside of his skull.
She is OURS. Stop this. STOP THIS NOW.
No. Lucian’s jaw ached from clenching. He is my brother. She is his. Stand down.
THE GODDESS CHOSE US. The scent confirms. She is our fated. OUR FATED.
I said stand down.
The wolf howled inside him. A sound of fury and grief and betrayal that Lucian absorbed into his chest and held there, because the alternative was letting it reach his face, and his face was standing three feet from his best friend at his bonding ceremony.
The officiant turned to Tristan. "Do you, Tristan Aelindor, son of Atlas, Prince of the Fae, take this woman as your bonded mate, before the Gods and under the light of the Moon Goddess, to protect, to cherish, to choose every day for the rest of your mortal life?"
Tristan looked at River. His green eyes were steady and burning and full of a decade of held breath finally being released.
"I do."
The officiant turned to River. "Do you, River Aelindor, daughter of this house and this crown, take this man as your bonded mate, before the Gods and under the light of the Moon Goddess, to honor, to trust, to walk beside for the rest of your mortal life?"
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