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“Oh, come on. You weren’t that bad in the last interview.”
“No one told me media junkets were going to be part of the job.”
“At the time, no one knew,” Dom reminded him.
“Lucas would have been so much better at this.”
“He’s not here, though, and you are. There’s no sense in dwelling on it. Last time I checked the dead weren’t coming back.”
The desk clerk informed me there was nothing she could do to move me up in the queue, so I took the hint and rejoined our group. “Well, some of the dead come back. Just not the ones who are good at politics.”
Grandmere was not amused. “Secret,” she grumbled, clucking her tongue. “It’s bad enough the boys are talking politics at a time like this. Don’t you start making jokes.”
She didn’t need to remind me how lucky I was. I knew perfectly well what a gift I had been given. Funny how I’d needed to die to learn to respect my life.
And now that I had it back, I wasn’t about to squander it. “Did you get it?” I asked Desmond, lifting his newspaper to see what was underneath.
Desmond smiled and pulled an envelope out of his blazer pocket, handing it across the table to me. I peeked inside, and my heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face if I tried.
“You really don’t mind doing it this way?” I gestured to the city hall lobby, which wasn’t completely rebuilt yet, with a plastic sheet covering one damaged wall and a few windows still boarded up.
He took my hand and kissed my fingers. “Not at all.”
“Mom is pissed you’re not doing it in a church,” Dom whispered.
Grace Alvarez, who had been busy fussing with Penny’s hair, didn’t miss the remark. She slapped Dominick lightly in the back of the head.
“Mom doesn’t care what her boys do as long as they’re happy.” She directed this statement mostly to Cas, who flushed. For a long time Dom had been afraid to admit the truth to his family, so I was pleased to see Grace was making an effort to show him she didn’t care if he was gay or not.
Honestly I’d been more worried about her reaction to our quickie wedding. I’d jokingly suggested we should run off to Vegas to avoid the wrath, but Desmond had vetoed that idea immediately. And he was right, it wouldn’t have been the same doing this anywhere else. This was our home and these people were our family. Anything else would have felt like cheating.
“I’d get married in a parking lot at this point.” Desmond never took his eyes off me.
I looked out the window, faintly embarrassed by the directness of his gaze. It felt like we’d taken the long way getting here. Des had wanted to get married right away, but I had insisted we wait. Things in New York were a mess, and even though I never second-guessed my decision to marry him, a wedding wasn’t my first priority. The repair efforts had to come first, and there was a lot of fallout to deal with after we’d saved the city. The buildings weren’t the only thing that needed rebuilding.
It had taken me a few months to really feel like myself again, to believe I was alive and that I could enjoy the sun-filled days. Last time it had happened it was taken from me so quickly I half-expected Aubrey to show up and snatch it away again.
It had been six months since I’d craved blood or hidden from the sun, and I was finally ready to move forward with my life.
Coming back from the dead was not the easiest affair, as it turned out. Even after Lucas’s funeral it had taken me weeks to regain any real strength. After I left Calliope’s for good, it was impossible to settle into a routine. New York had changed, and just as I’d predicted, the world had changed along with it.
The news was beside itself reporting on what had happened, and the government decided it was an ideal time to bring its black-ops group to the forefront. Now Tyler and Emilio were nationally recognized experts on the supernatural, and I had been thrust into the spotlight right alongside them as the only female member of their team.
Since I wasn’t a paranormal creature myself anymore, I didn’t mind the scrutiny. But they learned pretty quickly I wasn’t the best face to put forward to the media after I called a CNN reporter an asshole on live television.
To be fair, he had called werewolves freaks of nature.
Now, six months down the road, this new version of my life was starting to feel like real life, however bizarre it might be. Hell’s Kitchen was slowly returning to normal, but I found I no longer felt at home in my old apartment. That was where I’d lived when I hid from the sun and tried to be alone. Desmond’s building had made it through the bedlam unscathed, and since I no longer feared his big windows, it was the most logical place for me to go. We were engaged after all, and we’d lived together previously. It made sense. So I’d moved the few items I cared about in there, along with a very enthusiastic Rio, who was getting fatter by the month on all the Fancy Feast she could eat.
I glanced down the bench to the people who had taken the time to be with us today. Shane had his chin perched on Siobhan’s shoulder and was rubbing her belly. They had apparently had more fun than they’d let on during their battle in Brooklyn, because she was now six months pregnant. They both glowed from happiness, and I couldn’t help but smile. Good things had come from the wreckage. Not to mention that kid would put my former ass-kicking skills to shame.
Mercedes and Owen sat next to them, casting barely concealed glances at the pair. A small gold engagement ring adorned Cedes’s finger, something Owen had given her the day after we laid Lucas to rest. Our ordeal that night had left most of us desperate to embrace life, and seeing everyone move forward had helped me put some of the darkness behind me.
After Lucas’s funeral we’d had to face some pretty jarring legal realities. Desmond might have been king, but all of Lucas’s property and wealth had been willed to me. I’d donated most of the money in his private holdings to various projects to help restore the city, but I made sure to keep the upstate mansion so the pack always had a place to go. Dominick and Cas had moved in there as the permanent caretakers, whenever Dom wasn’t busy acting as Desmond’s guard.
Keaty, too, had left everything to me in his will, though this had surprised me a great deal less than it had with Lucas. Even now, months after we buried him, I still hadn’t been able to go to the old brownstone, let alone prepare it for sale. I hadn’t finished mourning him, and until I did there was no way I could let those last pieces of him go. Some things would take more time than others.
Clementine was making a glorious nuisance of herself on the West Coast, but was otherwise thriving. Sutherland had taken over my old apartment because his own building had been declared unsafe. He was faring decently, though I hadn’t seen much of him since Lucas’s funeral. I think I made him nervous now that I was back from the dead.
