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For a moment, the interior of the chapel is too dark for me to make out anything but the candles on the large black stone altar at the front and the flickering flames reflected in the stained-glass windows on either side of the nave. But by the time Darcy has led me to the second pew and motioned for me to precede him inside, I’m able to make out the silhouettes of roughly a dozen vampires surrounding us. It’s a smaller group tonight, which I expected. Annie explained this ceremony is for immediate family members only.
What I didn’t expect is the tension in the air…
As Darcy settles beside me, I swear I can feel the energy in the room shift and charge, like the atmosphere right before a storm cuts loose. I turn to him, lifting a curious brow, too afraid to so much as whisper in the humming silence.
He gives a subtle shake of his head and curls his fingers around my thigh above the knee. The intimate touch sends a rush of awareness throbbing up my thigh to pulse in intimate places, distracting me from the weird vibes long enough for Annie and Colin to step from behind the velvet curtains draped behind the altar.
The moment I see my sister, my jaw drops, and dread prickles up my spine.
I don’t know who that woman in the clingy black dress with lips painted blood red is, but she doesn’t look a thing like my shy, retiring sister.
And then she lifts a sharp wooden stake from behind her back and aims it at Colin’s chest, and I become certain neither of us are making it out of here alive.
Chapter Nine
Darcy
Blaire tenses beside me and her usually steady heart skips a beat.
Instantly, I realize Annie must not have warned her what to expect—or Colin failed to explain this ritual properly to Annie. Whoever is to blame, Blaire is clearly on the verge of leaping over the pew in front of us to drag her sister out of the chapel when I grip her upper arm and pull her closer.
“Here, I brought one for you,” I whisper, pulling the small stake from my suit pocket and lifting it to hover in front of her panicked face.
The look she shoots me in response is an eloquent mixture of confusion and temptation that would be amusing if we weren’t surrounded by thirsty vampires, and she didn’t smell like a juicy steak fresh off the grill. And if she weren’t clearly up for stabbing me through the heart if the opportunity presented itself.
“Just watch Annie and follow her lead,” I murmur as Colin welcomes the gathered company. “And be careful with the pointy end.”
“I’m always careful with the pointy end,” she murmurs, gripping the stake tightly in her left hand as her still wide eyes flick back and forth from the couple by the altar to the rest of the people in the room.
She seems to sense the danger, giving me hope that we may be able to pull this off, after all. As long as I can keep her away from anyone else with fangs until we get to the last part of the ritual, the danger should be over. But I still plan on having a long talk with Colin about the wisdom of this particular pre-wedding tradition. Just because we’ve always fasted before the ceremonial Touching of the Three Points doesn’t mean it should stay that way moving forward.
Call me crazy but allowing vampires to feed before they’re trapped in a room with delicious smelling witches just seems like a commonsense safety measure.
Thankfully most of the “witches” in the room tonight are vampires standing in for the missing Wonderfully sisters, just as several of the men from our clan are standing in for my brothers who couldn’t make it back from Europe in time for the wedding. But even being locked up with two witches in a small space after decades without any witch scent in the area is…a lot.
And thanks to Blaire’s late arrival, the restraint of every vampire in this room has already been tested.
Including my own…
I’m so distracted by the seductive pulse of Blaire’s blood that most of what my brother says goes in one ear and out the other. It’s only when Annie speaks in her soft, but steady voice that my mind latches onto language once more.
“With all my heart, I vow to protect yours,” she says, turning to Colin and lifting the stake into the air.
“With all my heart, I vow to protect yours,” the other women echo, turning toward their male counterpart.
“To protect yours,” Blaire finishes only a beat or two behind them. She’s catching on quickly, but it’s obvious from her expression that no one gave her any clue what to expect tonight.
If I end up avoiding a stake to the heart, I intend to have a long talk with Colin about including his future wife’s sister in the preparations for each event. He might not think a mortal woman poses a risk to my safety, but he doesn’t know Blaire the way I’m coming to know her.
Underestimating her is a bad idea.
She proved that tonight when she showed up looking like she dresses to the nines every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Fuck that fucking dress…
And her curves in that fucking dress…
Just…fuck.
