12

Lydia managed to wrangle the thrift store bag away from Case now that he was stuck with the much heavier and much more cumbersome bakery bag, and she felt proud of herself for achieving that much. It was obvious that he would’ve kept hauling both of them around if she’d let him.

Someone had to convince him not to shoulder everything alone, and since she was his fiancée and would be his wife—and mate—in another hour or two, that someone should obviously be her.

Don’t think about how it won’t last , she told herself. The sun’s shining, the pack’s happy, and Reeve’s in a bad mood. And I have a killer dress, a sugar high, and Case. For once in my life, I’m going to live in the moment and be happy. It’s my wedding day, after all.

“Any other stops you want to make?” Lydia asked.

She was torn between hoping Case would have an infinite number of stops in mind, so many that their pre-wedding errands would somehow mess with the concept of linear time and stretch the day out like taffy, and hoping that he would want to rush to the courthouse because, like her, he was actually looking forward to it.

It wasn’t until he answered that she realized one possibility had definitely had the edge for her, and it was the one he’d gone with.

“Nope,” he said happily. “Let’s go get married.”

Let’s go get married had to be her new favorite sentence.

It was a passion that could even survive having to stand in a long line for the marriage license.

There was no separate office for handling marriage licenses, not here. That kind of thing was for big cities, and this was a village that barely needed traffic lights. In Mountainview, the same tiny group of overworked courthouse employees handled everything, and they handled it all in one place, at one time. Lydia and Case were in line behind a bunch of people who needed their driver’s licenses renewed.

Case, for some reason, found this delightful.

“I didn’t realize you didn’t have a separate DMV here,” he said, when she asked him what he was getting such a kick out of.

“Mountainview’s so small we barely have a separate anything. We’re lucky Polly’s bakery wasn’t in the corner of the thrift shop.”

Case faked a shudder. “Selling gently used pastries?”

That really was a horrifying thought. “Let’s say they’d all have to be at least a day old, but not necessarily more than that.”

“That’s not so bad.” He hoisted the bag up a little, jostling it to draw her attention to it. “I bet everything here will still be delicious tomorrow. Actually, it had better be, because if we eat it all today, I think we might die.”

“But what a way to go.”

She was tempted to take another linzer cookie and eat it right here in line, but she tamped down on that urge: the desserts were for celebrating, so she was going to wait until they had something to celebrate.

They’re honeymoon cookies .

“But it had to be about more than us not having a separate DMV,” she said, when she’d successfully banished her desire to break into the honeymoon sweets. “You looked really happy about it.”

Case stayed quiet for long enough for Lydia to get truly curious, and then he said, “It’s just that earlier I was thinking that with you, I’d even be happy to spend the day ... like this. In line at the DMV. Picking up dry cleaning.”

“Oh,” Lydia said, a beautiful tingling spreading through her.

This was what it felt like to have butterflies in your stomach. She’d read that expression a thousand times, but she’d never really thought about it before, let alone felt it from the inside-out.

“I don’t want to push things,” Case said uncertainly, like they weren’t minutes away from getting married.

But she knew what she meant, because she kept telling herself the same thing. Did this mean that she didn’t have to? That they were really and entirely on the same page, both falling for each other at record-breaking speed?

The butterflies flapped around exuberantly at that thought and then sank back to the pit of her stomach.

No. She wanted Case to be open about his feelings—especially, and selfishly, when they made her feel like this—but that didn’t mean she should rush into being open about hers. If he changed his mind, the last thing she wanted was for him to feel trapped here. This wasn’t the life he wanted. Lydia belonged in Mountainview, and nothing about Case’s history said that he would be happy settling down in a dead-end town. He was already helping her out more than anyone else ever could. At the end of it, he deserved to walk away.

But they could have a fling, right? It would be an unusual one, with a marriage contract and honeymoon hamantaschen, but that didn’t mean it would have to be as serious as it would probably feel on her end. It could be fun. It could be good.

Most of all, it could be memorable . She could hold onto all this even after he was gone. She was never going to have this much color and fun in her life again, so she should soak it up while she had the chance.

She would have to be careful not to make him feel like she’d be crushed when he left. She had to play it the tiniest bit cool.

“You’re not pushing things,” Lydia said. “Anyone in her right mind would love hearing that. And I know the last couple days don’t really seem like evidence in my favor here, but I am in my right mind.”

That was the right tone to take, probably. Openly flirtatious but not outright head-over-heels.

But head-over-heels was exactly how she felt. According to her grandmother, Lydia had always “had a good head on her shoulders,” and somewhere along the way, she’d osmosed that that meant not ever letting her heart run away with her. She had “both feet on the ground.” She didn’t have fantasies—or if she did, she always drew a firm line between them and reality. Sure, she could turn into a werewolf, but that didn’t actually mean the world was full of magical possibilities. Things were hard, and they required hard work, and duty and pack took precedence over everything.

Case flew in the face of all that. He believed in responsibility the same as she did, and he was willing to do whatever it took to live up to a promise, but somehow he wasn’t dull and flat like that kind of life was “supposed” to be.

Somehow he took her head off her shoulders and her feet off the ground. She had gone her whole life without being romantic, and Case made her swoon.

Now, for his sake, she had to act like he didn’t, because the responsible side of Case meant that if he knew he’d affected her the way no one else ever had, he’d feel ... obligated.

She thought her flirtatious angle might be working, though. Case looked happy, and he certainly felt happy as he intertwined his fingers with hers again. Operation Fling was officially in progress.

Her wolf interceded, sounding surprisingly grumpy: What is this “fling” you keep talking about? I don’t think we should fling him anywhere.

Don’t be so literal. It’s a short love affair.

We should have a long love affair with him. What good is a short one? There’s no time to do anything.

Lydia half-agreed with it, but on the other hand, she could think of several excellent, highly worthwhile things she and Case would have time for.

But mostly, she realized with a pang, they wouldn’t include the texture of ordinary life that Case had been talking about before. Flings didn’t leave much time for standing in line at the DMV or picking up dry cleaning.

It was funny that you always heard about marriages foundering when they ran out of mystery and sexiness, when they had too much dry cleaning and not enough bedroom floors littered with clothes they’d torn off in the heat of passion. And here she was, getting ready for what promised to be a scorching hot fling, wishing that she could really have the marriage she was officially signing up for.

That’s life, though, isn’t it?

You humans are always so cynical about life , her wolf said. It really was in a surprisingly bad mood for a soon-to-be alpha who’d found out it probably could successfully protect its pack from a challenger. You always think it’s disappointing. Being alive can be fantastic.

Right now being alive means standing in line, Lydia pointed out. But at least we’re up next.

If it had any more deep insights to share with her, she decided that she didn’t want to hear them right now. It was only going to poke and prod her to reconsider her stance on Case, and that was because it was, at heart, selfish. Most animals were, and not in a bad way. They just didn’t do the more abstract thinking you had to do to put someone else’s psychological needs first. Mostly they didn’t do psychology at all.

So she tuned her wolf out for the time being and concentrated on Case. She gave herself permission to nuzzle her cheek against his shoulder as they waited.

“The sooner we sign this, the sooner I can see you in that dress again,” Case said. “I’m going to write like the wind.”

Lydia laughed. “You liked it that much?”

“Words can’t even describe how much I like it. And I shouldn’t tell my publisher that.”

Lydia’s head jerked up off his shoulder. “Wait. Your publisher?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Anyone else would have said it slyly, because this would have been an intentional surprise they were springing on her. Case seemed like he genuinely wasn’t sure. “I do some writing. It’s a good hobby for when you’re on the road a lot, and it’s a nice little bit of extra money.”

“You do some writing,” Lydia repeated. With as much reading as she did, this was like he’d casually thrown in that he was the crown prince of an idyllic Hallmark Christmas movie country. “That’s incredible, Case. What do you write?”

Given the kinds of things she knew he was interested in, she was sort of expecting something along the lines of travel writing or how-to guides.

He really knocked her for a loop when he said, “Mysteries.”

That was her all-time favorite genre. She tried to broaden her tastes every now and then, but she always came back to curious deaths, grizzled detectives, and everything in between. When the problems in her life seemed messy and unsurmountable, or when it felt like they would drag out forever, nothing was more comforting than curling up with someone else’s problem and seeing it get solved. She read everything from white-knuckle thrillers to knitters who solved crimes in between churning out lavishly described sweaters. She loved it all.

She was subjecting Case to her enthusiasm about all this when they were called up to the desk.

“But wait, I don’t think I’ve read anything of yours,” she said, as they stepped up.

“Probably not, but I use a pen name—we can tackle that in a second.”

Right. First the all-important marriage, then the prying into the life of the man she was falling—

Falling in love with.

Lydia swallowed.

She knew it was true. Talk about something more serious than a fling.

She could feel her wolf trying to reassert itself, and she knew it would have plenty of opinions to offer. She shoved it aside. She couldn’t deal with all this right now. She couldn’t.

Luckily, the marriage license itself was a pretty good distraction. She knew Wendy, the desk clerk overseeing it, and since Wendy was a member of the pack, she understood exactly what this marriage meant.

Wendy was also already pretty clued in for someone who’d been at the courthouse all day. Polly might have been surprised by their engagement, but Wendy sure wasn’t.

“I know I didn’t see the fight with Reeve,” she said to Case in a low voice, leaning over the counter, “but everyone’s been texting me about it. Is it true that you used to be human?”

It was dangerous to have that kind of conversation this openly, even in an undertone and even in a town like Mountainview, where eight out of every ten people were either in Lydia’s pack or—at the very least—aware of it. But considering how Reeve had been hovering over all of them like a specter of doom, Lydia could understand how relief would make Wendy take a couple of chances. After all, wasn’t she sort of doing the same thing?

“I was this morning,” Case said. “I’m not now.”

“Wow.” Wendy shot Lydia an impressed glance, like she was congratulating her on making the right choice. “That’s incredible. I didn’t know anyone could be so strong right after they were turned.”

“I didn’t either,” Lydia said.

Case twitched his shoulders in a kind of shrug and said, “I just wanted to be there for you.”

It made Lydia’s heart thump, and she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face.

Wendy looked back and forth between Case and Lydia, and the tentative hope in her eyes seemed to get even stronger.

“Okay!” she said chirpily. “Of course you wanted to be there for her, and it’s good that you could be. Let’s get this paperwork filled out so it’s all official.”

She breezed them through it and even phoned ahead to the other side of the courthouse to make sure the judge would be ready for them when they got there.

“We don’t have too many marriages here, so he’ll enjoy tying the knot for you two,” Wendy said. “And Montana doesn’t require witnesses, so you’re good there. Uh, Lydia, can I borrow you for a second before you go over there?”

Lydia never turned down a member of her pack who came to her with a reasonable request, especially when Wendy was only asking for a little bit of her time. She excused herself to Case—who seemed adorably happy to contemplate the mural that sprawled across the whole western wall—and let Wendy pull her aside.

“What is it?”

Wendy flushed. “I know you and Ruth have always been private, so this might seem inappropriate, me getting involved in your personal life, but I just wanted to say congratulations. For real.”

“For real?”

If possible, Wendy went even redder. “I mean, thanks, too, but ... the two of you—I mean, I knew you were getting married, obviously, but I thought it was for the sake of the pack. Like a business arrangement? Now that I’ve seen the two of you together, I know it’s more than that, and I wanted to say that I’m happy for you. Everyone will be. You deserve a real life and a real marriage, and I’m glad you’re getting one.”

She hadn’t realized that anyone in the pack had been fretting over her potential happiness at all. She would have thought that—understandably!—they would have been too scared about their own futures to worry about hers. The idea that Case made them happy for her as well as for themselves filled her with a confusing, fizzy warmth that she had no experience in dealing with.

They might be getting ahead of themselves, though. It wasn’t like things between her and Case were guaranteed to work out. Far from it.

... Right?

I mean, both Wendy and Polly think Case and I are good together. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?

“It’s ... complicated.”

Wendy apparently thought that Lydia had a much better grasp on her own thoughts than Lydia actually did, because she nodded invitingly, like there was obviously more information on the way.

What was Lydia supposed to say?

Of course I’m already halfway in love with him. Have you seen him? And even if I ignore what he looks like—which trust me, I can’t—he’s still incredible. He’s brave and good and adventurous, and he can shrug and take on everything the world throws at him. And I found out two minutes ago that apparently he also writes my favorite kind of book!

That all made sense on the surface, but Lydia couldn’t help feeling like it didn’t come close to capturing everything. It made it sound like she’d lost her heart to Case because he had checked off every box on some mental list of what would make a guy a total catch.

But the truth was, while Lydia was understandably wowed by Case’s truly ridiculous number of good points, she sensed that someone else could pop up right now with the exact same qualifications and leave her cold.

Because he wouldn’t be Case, would he? He wouldn’t daydream about standing in line with her at the DMV. He wouldn’t insist on buying her delectable wedding cookies. He wouldn’t like brownies from a store-bought mix, and he wouldn’t ruin his night defending someone else’s service dog. He wouldn’t right this second be looking genuinely interested in some courthouse mural painted by earnest high school students.

No one but Case could be this alive to the world and this ready to enjoy whatever it had to offer. No one but Case could make her heart lurch in her chest like this, like she was feeling years of joy and pain all at once.

She couldn’t say all that to Wendy, especially when she hadn’t even said it to Case .

“I really like him,” she said instead, trying to talk around the sudden lump in her throat. “I really, really do.”

Unlike “it’s complicated,” this answer seemed to be enough.

“I’ve seen how he looks at you,” Wendy said, smiling. “I think he really, really likes you too.”

Lydia couldn’t help smiling at that, because she remembered what Case had said earlier. “He likes a lot of people.”

Wendy shook her head, looking very sure of herself. “Yeah, I don’t think he likes them like he likes you. Now go get married. I’ll be there in spirit, throwing rice.”