Chapter Eight
The road wound through thickly forested land and led to an enormous set of iron gates decorated with elaborate scrollwork, with the Magister Pack’s giant “M” in the middle of each gate. It was the second set of gates they’d passed through.
“Why are there two sets of gates?” Mary asked.
“Oh, now you’re speaking to me?”
Mary had sat there in furious silence for half an hour as they drove.
“Don’t get used to it.” She scowled.
“This is the Alpha’s compound. Pack tradition says that now that I’ve bridenapped you, we must remain in here until the wedding.”
“For the next three weeks?”
He grinned wickedly. “I promise to keep you entertained.”
“In your dreams.” But her mind was immediately flooded with erotic images of him keeping her entertained.
“You’ve got that right. However, all I meant is that we’ve got plenty for you to do here.”
Craig kept driving, past hillsides with scatterings of houses grouped together, and farmland, until finally they pulled up in front of an enormous Gothic revival house which fittingly enough looked like an old castle. It had steeply pitched roofs, arched, leaded-glass windows, and tall spires jabbing at the sky. The front-facing gables were adorned with exquisitely carved lacy wood trim. Liveried servants who would easily have graced an eighteenth-century estate stood at attention by the front steps, and next to each servant stood a wolf, holding a basket of flowers dangling in its jaws.
Jarrod, Mary and Craig climbed out, and Mary stopped where she stood, sucking in her breath in amazement at the beauty of their surroundings.
Acres of flowers flowed around the house in rivers of brilliant color. Red and yellow tulips echoed the colors of her apartment’s décor. The blue trumpet flowers on the morning glories twined up on wooden lattices and made her heart sing. She envied whomever Jarrod was really going to end up marrying, for a million reasons, not least of which was that they’d get to call this amazing paradise home.
She imagined strolling through the gardens, snipping flowers and arranging them in crystal vases… No, that wouldn’t be her, it would be someone else.
“Man, this sucks,” she muttered.
“It sucks?” Jarrod asked, sounding surprised and shaken for the first time ever. “You don’t like the flowers? I had the gardeners start on them months ago. I picked all your favorite colors and… It’s okay, I’ll get them removed immediately.”
He was going to rip up acres of flowers, just for her? And what did he even mean, he’d had the gardeners start months ago?
The look on his face was so genuinely hurt that she felt a lance of remorse stab her right through the heart.
“The gardens don’t suck. They’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she rushed to explain. “I just mean it sucks that you’ve only pretended to bridenap me to get back at your uncle, and I don’t get to stay here.”
“Oh!” Jarrod said with an expression of relief. “So you do like them, and the only problem we have to deal with is that you’re crazy enough to think I’d fake a bridenapping. I can work with that!”
“I don’t like them – I love them to a degree that’s obscene,” she said, looking at the gardens with naked adoration.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Jarrod said happily. “Tell me what else you see around here that you love to an obscene degree. Emphasis onobscene.” He gestured at himself. “Hint, hint.”
Before Mary could scorch him with an appropriately sarcastic answer, a pack member rushed up to them.
“Sir, there’s a problem,” he said in urgent tones.
“Not right now. My future bride is about to tell me how much she appreciates me.”
“Sir, it can’t wait.”
Jarrod spun angrily to glare at the man. His face went hairy and he snarled at him.
“Not right now,”he growled. “I’m about to bring my bride-to-be into our home. Do you want to keep your face attached to your body?”
The man cringed away from him.
