My Fated Mate Was the One Man I Could Never Have novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bride

Lorna asks Jessa to be her maid of honor, Jessa agrees, and Hiram Pierce shows up at her parents' door.

"Give us ten minutes," Lorna said to Rhett.

"Lorna."

"Ten minutes, Alpha. Go stand by the road and be brooding where I can't see you."

Rhett looked at me.

I shrugged.

He went, and the gravel crunched all the way back to the fence.

Lorna sat down on the flat rock beside me and kicked off her heels.

Both of her heels went into the creek by accident.

"Well," she said, watching them float. "That's the most honest thing that's happened to me all week."

I laughed before I could stop it.

"You're really his fiancée."

"I'm really his fiancée, and I'm really sorry."

"You could have said so at the buffet."

"I was busy being horrified about the cheese."

"You could have said who you were."

"And watched you walk away sooner?"

She hooked her knees up under her chin.

"I've met him four times. He's polite and careful and he calls my father sir."

"And?"

"And not once has he looked at me the way he looked at you across that lawn."

"Lorna."

"I'm not angry. I want to be clear. I'm relieved, a little. Somebody in this deal is having a real feeling."

"Then marry someone who wants you."

"I would love to."

She turned her face to me, and the joking went out of it.

"My father signed the treaty. He chose Rhett, he chose me, and he chose the date."

"Nobody asked you?"

"I have never in my life been asked."

"What happens if you say no?"

"Blackwater goes to war, and the first thing my father does is call it Rhett's fault."

She picked at her nail.

"I can't stop the wedding, Jessa. But I don't want to stand up there alone."

"In front of your father's people."

"All of them."

I saw where it was going.

"No."

"Be my maid of honor."

"Absolutely not."

"You'd stand on my side of the altar, three feet from your fated mate."

"In a dress you picked."

"And he'd have to look at you the whole ceremony."

I opened my mouth to say no again.

It didn't come out.

Because I could see it.

Rhett at the altar with his eyes forced forward, and me three feet away, not crying, not begging, not going anywhere.

"I have one rule," Lorna said. "You keep your hands off the groom until I'm married to him."

"Why?"

"I'd like one thing at my wedding to go to plan."

"That's not a rule, that's a joke."

"It's a rule with a joke in it."

"If I stand up there, it's not for him."

"I know."

"And it's not for you, exactly."

"I know that too." She held out her hand. "I'll take it anyway."

I shook it, because the alternative was to go home.

My wolf stayed silent, and I told myself that was not why I'd said yes.

Mom was at the kitchen table when I came down in the morning, in the same chair, with the same cup.

She had not slept either.

"I heard you come in at two," she said.

"I was at the creek."

"I heard you were at the creek with Rhett Stallard."

The pack grapevine in Cedar Ridge is faster than any wolf.

"He wanted to apologize."

"And did he?"

"Not really." I poured coffee. "I'm going to be in the wedding."

Her cup stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Whose wedding?"

"The Alpha's. The bride asked me. I'm the maid of honor."

Mom set the cup down so gently it made no sound at all.

"No," she said.

"Mom."

"You will stay away from the Pierces. All of them. Lorna, her father, that hall."

She stood up, and her hands were shaking.

"I don't care what the pack says or what the treaty says. Not near Hiram Pierce, Jessa. Promise me."

"Why? He's the man who ended the war."

"Promise me."

"Mom, I'm twenty-five."

Dad turned a page of the newspaper.

He had been behind it the whole time.

"Deirdre," he said mildly. "She's an adult."

Mom turned on him.

Neither of them said another word, and the air in that kitchen was so thick I took my coffee outside.

At three that afternoon I was in the yard splitting kindling and feeling sorry for myself.

A long gray truck came up our drive and stopped.

The man who climbed out was broad and silver-haired, in a good wool coat and a rancher's boots.

He carried a bottle of whiskey by the neck.

He had a wide, easy smile.

"You'll be Jessa," he said. "Hiram Pierce. I heard my girl made a friend, and I couldn't wait."

"Mr. Pierce."

"Hiram, please."

He shook my hand with both of his.

"Is Gordon in? We walked the same border patrol years back, before the trouble. I wanted to thank him for the peace."

His eyes were friendly and brown and creased at the corners.

They went to my face.

Then they dropped to the silver chain at my collar, where the little moon had slipped out while I worked.

He stopped smiling for just a moment.

Then he looked up past my shoulder at the porch.

Dad stood in the doorway with the newspaper still in his hand.

He looked back at Hiram Pierce and did not say a word.

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