Chapter 151: Chapter 151 Laughing hard after such a long time
_Rowena’s POV_
Ezekiel recovered first and cleared his throat. “Alpha,” he said pleasantly, like a man who had not just been caught in the middle of something incriminating. “You’re back early.”
“Propose to who?” Alaric repeated. He wasn’t asking anymore. It had moved past a question into something else entirely, it was now a statement that expected an answer and wasn’t going to move until it got one.
Ezekiel opened his mouth.
“Don’t,” Pierre said under his breath.
Ezekiel closed his mouth immediately.
I decided this had gone on long enough. “Ezekiel proposed to me,” I said simply. “I said yes. We’re to be married in the spring. You’re invited.”
Alaric turned to look at me.
I looked back at him with the same expression I used on Virella, completely blank.
Kasper made a sound into his fist that was absolutely not a cough.
“She’s joking,” Pierre said, helpfully, to Alaric. Then he looked at me. “You are joking.”
“Am I?” I tilted my head slightly.
“Rowena,” Alaric said.
“Alaric,” I replied.
His jaw was doing something interesting. Not quite tight. I’d been learning to read the small things his face did when he was working very hard at keeping it neutral, and right now it was doing several of them at once.
Ezekiel, because he was constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone, chose this moment to add: “For what it’s worth, my father already sent a formal proposal to her grandmother. Nana accepted. So technically......””
“Ezekiel,” Kasper said flatly.
“I’m just providing context—”
“Stop providing context.”
Alaric had not looked away from me this entire time. I held his gaze easily, which was either a sign that I was genuinely unbothered or a sign that the head injury was affecting me more than I’d admitted. Hard to say.
“Your grandmother accepted a marriage proposal,” Alaric said, directing this at me specifically.
“Apparently,” I said. “I was a little busy being held captive at the time, so I wasn’t consulted.”
“That seems like an important oversight.”
“Nana operates on her own schedule,” I said. “She always has.”
Ezekiel nodded vigorously in agreement, like this vindicated him personally.
Alaric finally moved from the doorway and entered properly into the room, setting whatever he’d come back to bring on the table near the window.
The man was infuriatingly difficult to read when he chose to be.
He pulled the chair on the other side of my bed, the side Ezekiel wasn’t occupying, and sat down. Then he looked at Ezekiel across the bed with an expression that was perfectly polite and somehow deeply threatening at the same time.
“Your father sent a proposal,” he said.
“He did,” Ezekiel confirmed, to his credit not flinching.
“Without asking Rowena.”
“She was unavailable at the time, as she just mentioned.”
“And your plan was to tell her about it while she’s recovering from a head wound and a burned hospital room.”
Ezekiel considered this. “When you phrase it like that....”
“I’m going to stop you there,” I said, before this escalated into something that required a mediator. “Nobody is marrying anybody. Ezekiel, you know I love you, but I said I do as a joke.”
Ezekiel pressed a hand to his chest. “That’s going to stay with me for a very long time.”
“You’ll survive.”
“The heart wants what it wants, Rowena....”
“Your heart wants Pierre and you know it,” I said without thinking.
The room stopped.
I replayed what I’d just said and felt the faint, distant sensation of having made an error.
Pierre had gone very still. Ezekiel had also gone very still, which for Ezekiel was so unusual that it almost looked physically uncomfortable, like a dog that had been told to sit and wasn’t sure how long it was supposed to last.
Kasper was staring at the far wall, pretending he heard nothing.
Alaric looked between Pierre and Ezekiel with a weird expression.
“I—” Ezekiel started.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I said quickly, because his face had gone from playful to something more genuine, and I hadn’t intended that. “Forget I said it. Head wound.”
“You’ve been perfectly coherent until this exact moment,” Pierre said, very quietly, not looking at Ezekiel.
“I have a selective head wound,” I said.
It was supposed to be a joke, but no one laughed.
Ezekiel recovered himself after a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was lighter now. He still maintained his playful tone.
“Right,” he said. “Well. Since we’re all sharing things today.”
“We’re not,” Kasper said immediately.
“Since we’re all sharing things,” Ezekiel continued, undeterred, “I would like to say, for the record, that Rowena nearly dying made me rethink several of my life choices. And I stand by all of them.” He paused. “Mostly.”
Pierre finally looked at him.
Something passed between them that the rest of us weren’t meant to see.
I was fairly certain Alaric filed it away. He noticed things. It was one of the more inconvenient facts about him.
“Are you actually alright?” Kasper asked me, redirecting the conversation. I was sure Ezekiel was making him nervous. “Not the standard answer, please.”
I considered the question honestly for a moment. My head was actually hurting badly and I’m unable to think.
But I wouldn’t say that.
“I’ll be alright,” I said.
He nodded once, accepting it.
“Good,” he said. “Because Celeste already sent three messages asking for an update and I’m not answering them.”
“Why not?”
“Because the last time I responded to one of Celeste’s messages, I ended up coordinating a surveillance operation across two cities.” He said it with complete seriousness. “I’m not doing that again.”
I laughed loud, unable to hold it back in.
The laugh surprised and eased a heaviness in my chest.
Alaric was watching me when I looked up while wiping my teary eyes. His expression had shifted into something I didn’t quite have a name for.
Like something he’d been waiting to confirm had finally been confirmed.
I looked away first, which was also becoming a habit I didn’t love.
“Someone answer Celeste,” I said, to no one in particular.
“Not me,” said Ezekiel.
“Not me,” said Pierre.
“Absolutely not,” said Kasper.
I looked at Alaric.
He looked back at me with the look of amusement. “I’ll have someone handle it,” he said.
“Thank you,”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he replied. “She sent seven messages to my line as well.”
The room groaned collectively, and I found myself laughing again.
The others expect Alaric joined in.
Alaric maintained a smile.
Tears filled my eyes and I wondered, when was the last time I laughed this hard?
Comments