"Completely."
"You can't even enter the casino floor," I added. "Let alone order alcohol."
Mary collapsed back into her seat. "This is the worst mafia kidnapping in history. I survived our father and I'm defeated by Nevada state law."
"You can have a mocktail," Artem offered, not looking up from Mac. "I'll have Blade acquire one with an umbrella."
"I hate all of you."
There was no heat in it.
I placed a bottle of water beside Maeve’s elbow.
She looked at it. "Are you ordering me to hydrate?"
"Yes."
"Very romantic."
"Effective."
She opened the bottle.
The cabin settled. Ivan had closed his eyes again but wasn't sleeping. Artem was still pacing with Mac, his suit jacket abandoned over a seat, his shirt rumpled and damp and yellow at the cuff. Mary had gone back to her iPad but her shoulders were lower now, her breathing slower. Fergus snored against my thigh.
And somewhere below us, the American continent turned to desert and mountains.
In two hours we would land. Tomorrow Artem would stand in a chapel and legally bind himself to an omega who had stolen his shirt, and decided, on a cottage porch at midnight, that she was done being afraid.
Then we would forge paperwork using Mary's name to satisfy twelve old men who use Artem not having an omega as collateral.
It had fifty points of failure. Perhaps fifty-one. Mary had not yet given up on the margaritas and I did not trust Blade to enforce the drinking age with appropriate seriousness.
But Artem was humming something low and Russian to his son, and Maeve was drinking the water I'd given her, and Ivan's hand had found its way back to Mac's carrier even in sleep.
I resumed cataloguing, and for the first time in seventeen years of service, the catalogue contained more assets than threats.
16
Ivan
I peeked into thechapel, which was ridiculous.
Not tacky-ridiculous. Artem would rather swallow his own sidearm than be tacky. It was expensive-ridiculous, the kind of place where the air itself seemed to have been priced by the square foot. White roses climbed the archway in such obscene abundance that at least one florist had definitely cried in the service of our wedding. Crystal lights dripped from the ceiling like somebody had weaponized a chandelier catalogue. The aisle runner was cream silk. The pews were polished to a shine that reflected the altar candles in duplicate.
And every third pew had a Petrov man in it, pretending to be a wedding guest while carrying enough hardware to overthrow a small government.
Blade was near the back with his hands folded in front of him, which was how he always stood when he was trying to look unarmed. He wasn't unarmed. Killian had already threatenedthe photographer twice, once for getting too close to the door and once for "breathing with intent."
Mary was standing next to Gregor, her shoulders shaking with the effort of not laughing, which made her look so much like Maeve that it caught me off guard every time.
Mac was in his pram, wearing a sleepsuit with a tiny bowtie printed on the front, because Maeve had seen it in a shop and Artem bought him ten, along with everything else she fawned over.
Fergus was beside the pram in a matching bowtie, looking smug about it. The dog knew he was part of the operation. He'd been insufferable for days.
And Artem. My brother and the future Pakhan, the man who had stared down twelve Bratva heads and lied to their faces without blinking, was panting in his custom tuxedo like a teenager picking up his prom date.
"You're sweating," I said.
