They Made Me Hunt For My Own Wedding novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Lavender and Honey

Back home before dawn, Sabine lies smoothly to Beau, pours her sister's tea into a fern at the final dress fitting, and announces in front of eleven pack women that she will hunt alone; her brother Gray says he has already laid her trail.

"Tell me where it is," I said.

"I can't," Eli said. "The law says the bride finds it herself, or it isn't the hunt."

"Then why tell me you know?"

"So you'd stop believing the stones were at Weeping Ridge." He took my knife off the table and held it out, handle first. "Go home, Miss Corwin. Be the bride they think you are. Don't drink anything they hand you."

"I already didn't."

Something in his face eased.

"Then your wolf has better sense than your family," he said.

He walked me to the river and stopped at the water's edge.

He did not touch me, and he did not ask.

I crossed alone with my boots in my hand and my knife in my teeth, and when I looked back he was still standing on the far bank.

I let myself into the house at four in the morning.

Beau was awake.

He sat on the couch in the dark with the pillow I had put under his head in his lap.

"Bee," he said. "Where were you?"

"Walking."

"At four?"

"I couldn't sleep."

He stood up and came to me and put his hands on my shoulders.

His face was soft with worry, and I watched his brows draw together half a second too late.

"You smell like smoke," he said.

"Somebody's burning brush up the shore," I said. "It carries."

He kissed my forehead.

"Get some rest," he said. "I love you. Everything is handled, I promise."

I said, "I know you do."

It was the first lie I had ever told him, and it came out smooth.

At nine the pack women filled my mother's old sewing room for the final fitting.

There were eleven of them, with pins and tea and cake, and my wedding dress stood on the form by the window.

It was cream silk with a high collar, and I had chosen it a year ago and loved it.

Opal knelt at my hem with pins in her mouth.

"Hold still," she said around them. "You've lost weight. Are you eating?"

"I'm eating."

"You're worried." She took the pins out and squeezed my ankle. "Don't be. Saturday's going to be perfect."

She handed me a cup from the tray.

"Lavender and honey," she said. "It'll settle you."

The cup was warm and it smelled like honey and something bitter underneath.

I thought of the sink at midnight.

"Thank you," I said, and I held it and did not drink.

When Opal turned to the others, I stepped back to the windowsill where my mother's fern stood, and I tipped the cup into the pot.

The fern drank it.

The women were talking about the cake.

Nobody saw.

"Sabine," said a woman from the church committee, "you'll want a scent guide for the hunt. It's tradition for the bride to take one of the elders."

"Or Gray," someone said. "He'd go in a heartbeat."

I turned around with the empty cup in my hand.

Eleven faces looked at me, and Opal's was the kindest of them.

"No guide," I said.

The room went quiet.

"The old law says the bride hunts alone," I said. "I want to do it the old way. Alone, on my own nose, from the river to the stones. I've tracked this forest since I was nine years old."

"Sweetheart, that's a lot to take on," said the committee woman. "Nobody's done it alone in forty years."

"Then I'll be the first one in forty years."

I smiled at her.

I smiled at Opal too.

Her smile stayed exactly where it was, but her eyes went to the door.

I knew what she was doing.

She was sending a thought down the link to my brothers.

The door opened before she finished, and Gray filled the frame, with rain on his shoulders and my father's keys in his hand.

He looked at me, and then at the fern, and then at me.

"Dad already agreed to the route," he said. "He told me to tell you."

"He agreed to what route?"

"Yours," Gray said. "I laid the trail for you myself this morning. Everything's marked."

The women said how sweet that was.

Somebody clapped.

I kept my face in the one position I had been practicing all morning.

"That's kind, Gray," I said. "Where does it start?"

"The old quarry road," he said. "Follow the red ribbon all the way to the end. You can't miss it."

I looked at my big brother's open, friendly face.

He had taught me to read a track when I was nine.

He had told me the first rule of tracking, which is never to follow a trail someone wants you to follow.

"I can't wait," I said.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend