Chapter 230

Russo’s POV

Somehow, the bow tie on my tuxedo felt like it was choking me. I had no idea that I could be this nervous before my wedding. It wasn’t like I had any family or friends or pressure on me or anything. And Lisa and I were fully acquainted, to the point we were expecting a child, so there wasn’t any mystery waiting for me at the end that I needed to be nervous about.

Still, my palms were sweaty, and the collar was entirely too tight.

“Stop fidgeting,” Justin ordered, poking at my shoulder. “You’re squirming around like a schoolboy before his first dance.”

I made a face at him. “I’m getting married,” I protested. “This is a big deal.”

Justin hmphed and crossed his arms. “What are you so nervous about? It’s not like you’re the last one of your kind to ever get married.”

This drew out a grudging smile from me. “No, and it’s a good thing we moved our wedding up into June. Because if we waited any longer, Lisa would definitely be obviously pregnant in her wedding dress.”

“How do you know that the dress she’s got is going to hide it?” Justin asked. “I’ve seen her walking around town. She’s showing high and proud.” He clapped me on the back. “Good work, Papa.”

I shooed him away. “You know, I’ve never understood that,” I said. “I feel weird having people congratulate me on her pregnancy. I mean, not at first. Don’t get me wrong.”

I straightened up my bow tie and poked at the cummerbund, trying to get it to line up. “See, at first, it was like congratulations to us both on the coming child. But now she’s spent several months growing a child inside of her, and I’ve had to do nothing. So when people congratulate me, it feels strange to me, like my part in this was really hard.”

I grinned at Justin. “I got off inside Lisa. Do people need to congratulate me for cumming?” I gestured in Justin’s direction. “You’re a guy and soon-to-be father. You know exactly what I’m talking about like cumming is a big deal. In order to get a child, all you have to do is aim specifically, and it’s where we all aim to go anyway.”

Justin ducked his head in acknowledgment. “Well, you’d think it would be that easy, but producing lycan pups was a lot more difficult than just cumming inside Helen. But I kinda get what you’re saying. You know, you get yours, and then they get pregnant, and you don’t really have anything else to do with it after that. At least not until the baby comes out. Then you can start helping her parent.”

He looked at me. “You are planning on starting on helping parent, aren’t you?”

“I am not planning on starting,” I said. “I plan on parenting the whole time. Don’t you?”

Justin rubbed the back of his head, looking rather nervous. “Well, yeah. Of course. I just . . . R-Russo,” he stammered over my name. “Can I confess something?”

“Right now? Right before the ceremony?” I asked incredulously.

“I might not get the guts again,” he admitted.

“All right,” I said. “Lay it on me.”

I went over to the table and picked up my boutonniere, taking it from the little case so that I could put it through the buttonhole on my tux.

Justin came over and started helping me. “it’s just . . . I’m worried I’ll become my father,” he said in a quiet voice. “I really don’t want to be him.”

“Then you won’t be,” I said, reassuring him. “If you make an effort to be even, well, honestly, I just don’t think you can get a whole lot worse than chaining your son in the basement,” he finally got around to saying. “I mean, geez, you could completely ignore the kid, and you’d still be a better dad than your dad was.”

I chuckled. “Well, you’re right about that. But I still want to be better than the bare minimum.”

“Right,” Randy said, coming through the door from the outer room.

The church that we were in had a sort of waiting room that we had taken over for dressing. I was getting dressed in the back, and most of the groomsmen were getting dressed in the forward room.

Randy scooted Justin out of the way and pinned the boutonniere on me in one swift movement. “Russo’s right, Justin. All you have to do is make up your mind to do it, and you will do better than your father. Guaranteed.”

Helen’s POV

I drank in the garden air surrounding everyone at Lisa and Russo’s wedding. Lisa had gotten all the flowers she wanted, and the reception smelled like a garden. At four months pregnant, the pretty empire waist of her wedding dress still hid her barely showing baby bump. Between her dress and the flowers all over, it made her look like some sort of medieval princess in her bower.

Russo said his vows, hands clasped with hers, his eyes shining with love. All I could think was that I hoped their relationship and having children would turn out easier than what I had gone through. They were such a pretty pair and genuinely good people that I hoped nothing but the best for both of them.

For me, on a personal level, one of the best things about the wedding was simply having everyone together and happy. Because this was the first time that we’d done a big event since everyone had let go of the fact that I was carrying the Huntsman’s child, I’d worried about possible tension.

Thankfully, we’d had almost two months to get along and find our places with each other again. Every now and then, I’d encounter a moment of tension, but by and large, things were back to normal.

Justin moved back in with me, and I felt like we were making some real progress. The other thing we’d started making progress on was an active campaign of trying to change the stigma around being a werewolf with multi-colored coats. To combat this bias, we’d set up a camp that was open to all werewolves of more than one color.

There they could have genetic testing done, and they could undergo counseling to help them break free from past traumas. And every Wednesday and Sunday night, the camp hosted a community dinner.

Wednesdays were bingo and pizza, and Sundays were movies and a spaghetti feed. These events were open to the entire True Mates pack and, actually, all of werewolf kind if they wanted to drive in from farther away.

But the idea was to get them to socialize with the multi-color coated werewolves more naturally so that they could begin to integrate with one another. But for as much as I still had problems weighing on me, a large part of me recognized how much more relaxed I was. For example, being able to enjoy this wedding with my friends and my husband at my side, pregnant with at least his lycan pup.

Because while so much of the time felt focused on the negative, we did have those positives in our lives, and things were definitely better. We didn’t have to hide. We didn’t have to run.

So, from time to time, I simply needed to remind myself to focus on how much better life was than it had been. Well, looking back on it, all the way up until this point, life had sucked.

In the grand scheme of things, this might have been the best things had ever been for me in my whole life. While the lineage of my twins presented worries, they weren’t anything like what they were before.

After the ceremony in the garden, we were supposed to move back up to the patio at the back of the mansion. Justin and I had agreed to let Russo and Lisa use the space for the wedding. There was more than enough room on the back patio and in the surrounding gardens for everyone to mingle.

Crossing the lawn to head for the patio, I caught a whiff of something that made my hair curl. I’d recognize that stench anywhere.

Justin’s father.