Chapter 87

Kayla

By the time I burst in the front door of the estate that evening, the sun was beginning its descent over the horizon and a light snow had begun to fall outside. I expected to find Nicholas lounging on the sofa with his legs crossed at the ankles and his feet up on the coffee table in that lazy manner of his, but he wasn’t there.

In fact, he didn’t appear to be home at all. I didn’t find him in his study, nor did I find him in the garage, working on a motorcycle.

I did find Jade and Emma in the kitchen, though, a half-empty bottle of wine between them. Emma was perched on the counter while Jade was pacing around, throwing together what looked like a very haphazard tray of nachos for them to share.

“Have either of you seen Nicholas?” I asked, stopping in the doorway.

The two women paused and looked at me. As I suspected, that mischievous glint was in Emma’s eye. As usual.

“Looking for your Prince Charming?” Jade smirked, folding her arms across her chest.

I rolled my eyes, having grown too used to their teasing to feel very bothered by it, and held out the seating card sample. “The print shop burned down. I was thinking of making a bunch of these myself. Or something close to it, anyway.”

Emma took the card and studied it for a moment before wrinkling her nose. “This is boring.”

I couldn’t help but agree. In typical fashion, Nicholas had picked out the most bland design he could think of. In fact, he probably didn’t even pick the cards out himself; he probably pointed randomly to a page in the wedding planner’s book and said “I’ll take that one.”

Jade and Emma, sensing that a girls’ night was in order, beamed at me in tandem. Jade held up a fresh bottle of wine and a rather greasy but delicious looking tray of nachos.

“Shall we?”

Within less than twenty minutes, the three of us were all sitting cross-legged around the coffee table in the living room, a bad rom-com playing on the TV in the background. Snacks, wine, and craft materials were piled between us, and we had changed into something more comfortable; I had slipped into an old pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, my hair in a messy bun on top of my head. With no men here, I didn’t exactly care about appearances. Not that I ever really cared anyway. Or so I told myself.

Once we were all settled in, Jade poured three fresh glasses of wine for us and leaned in to inspect the sample seating card.

“You really want to replicate this one?” she asked, holding it up to reveal the intricate floral details and cursive lettering.

I flushed a little. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter, you know? It’s just a seating card, and it’s not like it’s a real wedding.”

Emma and Jade looked at each other for a moment, and their silence spoke volumes.

Finally, Emma said softly, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘real’ wedding or not. You still want it to be your picture-perfect day, don’t you? The kind of day that was stolen from you by—”

“Emma,” Jade warned, cutting her off before she could finish.

But Emma didn’t need to finish for me to know what she was about to say. My shoulders slumped a little with defeat, and not even a big gulp of wine could make the thoughts go away.

“You’re right,” I admitted. “My fairytale wedding was taken from me. But this isn’t going to be my dream wedding. And at this point… I’m not sure if I’ll ever get one.”

Emma gasped softly. “Kayla, you can’t say that!”

“You’ll have your dream wedding,” Jade said almost matter-of-factly. “Someday, sooner or later.”

“Maybe sooner rather than later,” Emma added with a sly little wink.

The implication wasn’t lost on me. My cheeks flushed even deeper, and I quickly grabbed a stack of off-white construction paper. “This wedding is not going to be my dream come true,” I said sternly, although there was no hiding the slight quiver in my tone.

Emma and Jade didn’t seem entirely convinced, but thankfully, they didn’t push it. We got to work on the place cards after that, trying out various iterations until we finally settled on a design we could agree on: a delicate champagne-colored paper with an ornate design stamped around the edge, Times New Roman font for the lettering, and a stencil of the Bluemoon and Nightshade sigils—a crescent moon for Bluemoon and a vine twisting around it to represent Nightshade—at the bottom.

The sketch was courtesy of Jade, who apparently had a hidden talent for drawing that neither of us knew about.

“Wow,” Emma breathed, holding the card up to the light. “This looks… beautiful. The pack sigils look really cool together.”

I was silent, although even with a healthy dose of wine flooding my system and making my head fuzzy, I couldn’t deny it. They did look nice together. They looked… right, even. Like the crescent moon of Bluemoon was always supposed to be wrapped in the deep green vines of Nightshade, the delicate purple flower of a nightshade plant dangling from the tip of the crescent moon.

It almost felt like, before now, both pack sigils had been… incomplete.

But that was ridiculous.

Without further ado, we got to work on the cards. Emma carefully cut and folded the paper while I stamped the border and the text on, ink staining my fingers and sweatpants. Jade then carefully sketched the design onto each card, and then Emma colored each design in with colored pencils.

They weren’t the level of quality one might get from a print shop, that was for sure. Some of the text was off-center, and the sigils each had their own unique quality due to being drawn by hand.

But I loved them. It wasn’t even really about the cards anymore, but rather the process of drinking and eating with my friends, laughing as we worked, and passing the cards back and forth.

Something that I hadn’t been able to experience before.

Eventually, the list of names that had to be printed on the cards dwindled, and we took a break to drink and talk.

Of course, it eventually turned into a game of Truth or Dare. I laughed as Jade made prank calls to her ex, cried when Emma told the truth about her past, and hid my face in embarrassment when they asked me about my sex life with Liam.

But everything changed when Jade asked me that one fateful question.

“Kayla, what do you really think about Nicholas?”

The room fell silent. I lifted my head, my vision swimming ever so slightly from the wine, and huffed out a little laugh that didn’t really have any humor in it. “I can’t stand him. You know this.”

Jade pursed her lips, looking entirely unconvinced. “Come on, Kayla. Tell the truth.”

“I am—”

“We both see the way you look at him,” Emma cut me off, slurring her words slightly from the wine. “Sometimes, it’s like he’s the only person in the entire world.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. On one hand, I wanted to slap both of them for being so presumptuous, but on the other…

They were right. I hadn’t done the best job of hiding my affection for Nicholas, even from myself. No matter how much I wanted to hate him, no matter how much he wanted me to hate him, I couldn’t help it.

I just… couldn’t bring myself to dislike him. Even when he was a prickly grouch half of the time and a narcissistic playboy the other half.

After a moment of silence, it became clear that my friends weren’t about to let me off on this one.

I took a deep breath. “Alright, fine. I…” I hesitated, swallowing around the sudden lump that had formed in my throat. “I do like him. Sometimes.”

Jade’s eyes narrowed, while Emma’s began to sparkle.

“Go on…” Jade urged.

With a sigh, I continued, “I don’t know if it’s purely physical or not—I’d say it’s a manifestation of the mate bond that he created, but that wouldn’t be true, because we almost slept together once before he marked me. But… I don’t know. He pisses me off so much sometimes, and then other times, he has this ability to turn around and be the most selfless and kind person I’ve ever met.”

The room was utterly silent. Even the TV seemed to have muted itself. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop talking.

“I don’t know how I feel in my heart, but I do know one thing: I… am extremely attracted to him. Sometimes, he’s all I can think about. And sometimes, I almost just wish that we would sleep together and get it over with. Either so I can get that release and move on, or so that he can get his way and do what he’s always done with women: have sex and then find another to pine for.”

I paused one last time, licking my lips, before I finished.

“Either way, I think it would be a whole lot easier if I just gave in to the temptation. Or maybe it would be more complicated, but there’s a part of me that loves making things more complicated.”

Jade and Emma stared at me in the wake of my confession, their fingers white around their wine glasses. Neither of them said a word, and suddenly, I realized that they weren’t looking at me.

They were looking behind me.

Slowly, I turned to see Nicholas standing in the doorway. His face was as impassive as ever, but even he couldn’t hide the tiny flicker of something unreadable behind his eyes.