“Eileen, you know what comes after this,” Ethan said, voice stern though his eyes sparkled with mirth. “Marriage.”
“Oh, you stupid—” Eileen snarled, lunging up from her spot at the breakfast table and proceeding to chase after Ethan, who wove his way in and out of furniture to make her path more difficult.
Gray, still patiently sitting at the table, said, “I would appreciate it, Ethan, if you stopped antagonizing my fiancée.”
“Yeah,” Eileen snapped, ceasing the chase and folding her arms over her chest. “Besides, I haven’t decided who all’s going to be in the wedding.” Her eyes narrowed mischievously. “I was thinking you could be the flower girl.”
Smothering a chuckle, Gray kept his gaze on the papers in front of him while Ethan glowered. Daintily, Eileen spun around before heading back to her seat. “I was also thinking about asking Evan instead.” Not that she expected either one of them to go for it: in the end she’d probably have to look for someone else outside her family.
“I think that’s a much better idea,” Ethan agreed, voice still dangerous and eyes still shining.
Gray muttered something under his breath about the two of them. Eileen rubbed her hand along the fourth finger on her left hand, wondering if she’d get used to having a ring there. Though Gray protested that they’d find a ring together later, Eileen didn’t really care: werewolves didn’t always take the traditional marriage route, sometimes settling with none to small weddings, and Eileen agreed with those thoughts—she just cared about being with him.
The proposal had been simple. After discussing their roles in the upcoming war, a silence had fallen. And, knowing that they would always be together anyway…
“You blurted out, ‘What if we got married?’ and I had no choice but to oblige,” Gray muttered.
Startled out of her memory, Eileen asked, “How do you do that?” Every single time she’d thought about the proposal recently, he’d been able to chime in at just the right moment and finish it for her. It was kind of unnerving, especially when he swore he couldn’t read her mind.
“You get that dreamy look on your face,” Gray said with a grin. “And it’s easy to figure what you’re thinking about. After that it’s just luck.” Huh. Eileen accepted the answer for the moment because Gray tapped the papers in front of him, changing the subject. “The sooner we focus on this the faster we get done with this unofficial meeting and can start going after the hunters.”
The hunters had been smart. Eileen’s thoughts drifted once again.
Soon after the proposal situation Eileen and Gray had grouped with everyone else and decided they couldn’t wait much longer. Eileen had been allowed to go along, something that thrilled her: being able to calm Gray down had its perks now. Despite feeling confident in her skills, Gray had kept her protectively behind him as he approached the fallen compound and scoped the area for hiding hunters.
Without being asked, Eileen had watched their backs, though no one showed.
After five minutes of scanning the empty woods, they finally dropped their careful stance and decided something was definitely wrong. It took another ten minutes to discover the hunters had abandoned the area after finding their fallen leader: Eileen and Gray had no choice but to return home and devise a different plan, given the change in circumstances.
Several days later and Eileen was tired of going over maps, letting them know so by dropping her head over the back of the chair, exasperated. Gray patted her arm lightly, still tracing routes on the paper in front of him. “They’re moving as one group, so as long as we can catch up to them, we could still take out a good number before they retreat too far for our reach.”
“You’d have to go ahead of everyone,” Eileen muttered, closing her eyes. “We’re not as fast.”
Alpha training had kind of reversed: instead of testing Eileen’s skills, they’d been testing Gray’s. His eyes had taken to permanently glowing, which was eerie but cool. Along with that came new strength, speed, and reaction time. Before, Eileen could sometimes outrun him, and now she had absolutely no chance. The last race had ended with Gray nearly tripping, and then soaring from the middle of the track to their designated end point in less than a second.
“I won’t leave without you,” Gray said, as though it was supposed to be reassuring. If anything it made Eileen feel like deadweight for being so much slower.
“Then we should probably leave right after this, so we even have a chance at making it on time,” Eileen stated. And she was serious. The hunters would tire quicker, but werewolves still needed their not-as-often rest too.
Shaking his head, Ethan said, “You can’t.”
“Oh?” Eileen challenged, sitting up in her chair. She bet this had something to do with the upcoming wedding: it felt like that’s all anyone focused on now, since Gray was the sole one responsible for hunting the hunters because of his venom. They’d already written the war off as a victory and didn’t doubt Gray’s abilities, so instead they enjoyed picking on Eileen. Mostly they just poked at her for insisting she hated Gray for such a long time, but other times they brought the whole “kid” thing in, and that always ended in a brawl Gray had to break up.
And frankly, Eileen was tired of wedding stuff. She didn’t care how soon it happened, or who would sit where. Before she thought about cake, music, and dancing, she wanted to know—not assume—that the werewolves were safe from hunters. It would be just her luck that during her wedding someone would attempt to kidnap her again.
Over the phone, Eileen and Gray had informed Uncle Bill about their marriage plans. Bill hadn’t been too surprised, and the Aunt—Jane—had been ecstatic, gushing about all sorts of preparations. Having grown up with more testosterone than estrogen around the house, Eileen found all of Jane’s wedding plans scary, so she’d made a point to not discuss anything further until the hunters were taken care of.
“You two have been avoiding The Legacy,” Ethan said, drawing her back to the present. He pushed the book in question to the middle of the table. Eileen couldn’t honestly remember ignoring it, per se: it just wasn’t like she read picture books a lot. “You still need to document what happened between the two of you.”
Letting out a laugh, Eileen said, “My art skills are too advanced for that, unfortunately. Looks like I’m out.”
Gray, intrigued, challenged, “I don’t know, I think I’m pretty good at drawing too. I suppose we’ll each have to do our own version and have someone judge.” Eileen wished he hadn’t come up with that plan: in truth, she sucked at drawing.
“Let’s get this over with,” she grumbled, pulling open a kitchen drawer to find pencils. Ethan had already placed some paper on the table.
Staring at the blank page, Eileen didn’t even know where to start. Was it worthwhile to mention her Alpha training? Did she mention their experiments? Frowning, she decided to take the easy route and attempt a picture for the torn page. She would explain what happened after the silver supposedly caused “death.”
She sketched eyes, placing stray marks around them for the “glowing” effect. Next she drew a person holding a house over their head—that symbolized strength well enough, right? Lastly, she showed a poorly drawn wolf standing over a dead hunter. Before she could fix anything on her picture, the image was snatched out of her hand by Gray. When she protested he offered her the one he’d come up with.
It took up the entire page. It wasn’t well drawn, but the scenes rang a bell. Two people holding hands. A lone wolf, howling and then, next to that, the wolf finding the girl again. “This is just of us,” Eileen accused.
There was an image of Eileen nestled into Gray’s side, which she didn’t remember happening, but maybe that was supposed to symbolize how he felt calm around her? Focusing on a medium-size sketch of her face, Eileen said, “And me.” It wasn’t a bad drawing, but she felt embarrassed seeing herself drawn out so many times.
“Huh, you’re right,” Gray mused. “Guess we’ll just have to use yours.”
Eileen scowled.
“I’ll take it,” Ethan said, tucking it into the pages of The Legacy. “I’ll make sure the counsel gets a copy.” He grinned at Eileen. “I’ll also let them know you’re the artist.” With that he stood up and left, leaving Gray and Eileen alone at the table.
Through her lashes, Eileen caught Gray’s gaze. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“Better question: are you ready?”
“Sure,” Eileen said, scoffing. “I just have to stand around and look pretty so you don’t get too crazy. You’re the one who gets to go around biting hunters until your venom kills them.” She stretched her arms over her head, enjoying the pull of her muscles. “Now let’s go kick some hunter ass so we can move on in our lives.”
Gray, curious, asked, “What are you in a hurry about?”
She would’ve said the wedding, but that was a lie. She liked being with Gray, with or without the fancy union looming. “Well,” she said slyly. “I do remember asking you to dance with me, and you rejected me. So, dancing with you might be nice.”
Mostly, she was teasing. But she’d danced with Gray when they were younger, and she just felt like it might make her happy to dance with him again. To prove they had ended up together or something.
“You’re not at all excited about being Alpha?” Gray teased, tugging on her hair.
Yep, marrying him would give her Alpha status as well. “Been there, done that,” she said casually, wrinkling her nose. “But yes,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. No one from his pack—or her old one— had ever made her feel weak, but it would be nice knowing she truly had power over others.
Noting Ethan still hadn’t come back, Gray said, “You know, if you really want to dance, we can.”
Despite the lack of music, Eileen allowed herself to leave the table and lean into him as they swayed. No, this really wasn’t the type of dancing they’d done when they were younger: but she liked this just as much.
She liked him, really.
“What’s going on?” Eileen heard Ethan ask: apparently he’d come back.
“Well,” Gray started, grinning down at Eileen. “Once again, Eileen asked me for something, and I had no choice but to oblige.”
Funny how Gray’s arrival had made Eileen think her life was over. Instead, she’d come out stronger from the Alpha training, found out she was an integral piece in eliminating the threat of hunters, and she got to marry her one and only crush, a boy who had offered—and had given—her everything.
---
The end! Thank you so much to everyone who's stuck with the story. It's a very cheap eBook if you're so inclined, and the eBook offers 20,000 more words of detail, plot, characters, an extra chapter, a sneak peek at my next noveling adventure... But anyway, it would mean so much if you would vote/comment/support Legacy in the last few days before the Watty Awards! My other short story is entered and I'm also going for Best Trailer on Legacy; a little love there would be nice too. :)