Chapter Forty-Three

For three days, Hunter Evans, previously a highly decorated firefighter and currently a vampire, sat by Alice’s side as she slept.

Meara kept him company most of the time, but Bane, Edge, Luke, and the Cassidys all also stopped by to bring him food or blood or just sit with him. Even the wolf alpha and beta, Carter and Max, stopped by once, stuck their heads in and saw Alice’s still form, and offered their best wishes.

Bane told him that this was normal. That his, Hunter’s, Turn had been the one that was out of the ordinary, with the way he’d kept waking up out of the coma. That this was how it was supposed to go.

For three days, Hunter ignored all of them and waited and watched, holding Alice’s hand.

For three days, Charlie waited with him, curled up on the end of the bed in the mansion’s safe room, his tail wrapped protectively around Alice’s ankles.

Apparently, although he had no memory of it, he’d told them about Charlie being trapped in the tunnel. He’d even told them about the pirate, when they’d finally reached the house and found him draping the emerald necklace over Alice’s icy throat.

She’d died, technically, just before he’d begun the process of the Turn. The blood exchanges.

He’d heard them, when they thought he was asleep, discussing the odds of whether she would wake up at all or, if she did, whether she would be whole. Or sane.

Or still herself.

He was almost afraid to hope. If she died, he would gladly walk into the noon sun.

For three days, he waited.

On the third day, just after dusk, she opened her brilliantly green eyes and smiled at him, and the sun began to shine again in his world.

For the first time in three days, he could draw in a full breath. For the first time in three days, he didn’t curse his heart for beating without her.

She smiled at him, and his soul shattered into tiny, crystalline shards of joy and hope and love. And then he started shaking, and he couldn’t seem to stop.

She tried to speak but only made a croaking sort of sound.

He scrubbed at his face, pushing the tears away, and then took her hand, trying to pull himself together. “Alice? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

She stretched, rolling her neck, and then glanced down as if surprised that her legs didn’t move, smiling when she saw Charlie asleep at her feet.

But she still didn’t say anything, and Hunter’s heart began to plummet. “Alice! Please, sweetheart. Please talk to me.”

She glanced up at him and licked her dry lips. “Hunter?” Her voice was a rusty croak, and it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

“Yes, love? What is it? Anything you need, I’ll find a way. Just tell me.”

She squeezed his hand. “Can we have spaghetti and meatballs?”

When everyone raced up to find out what was going on after Hunter shouted out his joy, they found the two of them together, laughing and crying, and the little dragon hopping around the room, dancing with happiness.

“She’s going to be okay,” Hunter told them, stroking Alice’s beautiful red curls and holding a glass of water for her to sip. “She’s going to be just fine.”

“Of course she is,” Meara said, her golden eyes suspiciously wet. “She’s a badass. And I’m planning the wedding.”

Alice blinked. “Wedding? Who’s getting married?”

Hunter kissed her cheek, holding her and never wanting to let her go. “We are. Don’t you remember? You proposed.”

“I what?”

“Oh, no. You can’t back out on me,” Meara said. “I’ve already begun wedding plans. You’re stuck with him now.”

Alice smiled, her entire heart shining in her eyes for everyone to see. “Then I must be the luckiest woman in the world.”

Hunter kissed her again, only letting her go when he heard a chittering sound at his feet.

“You have another visitor, by the way. He wouldn’t stay at the rescue without you, so Meara brought him over here until you recovered.”

Before Alice could ask, Ferret Bueller hopped up into her lap, chattering excitedly, clutching something in his tiny paws. Alice reached out a finger and stroked his head, and he closed his eyes and leaned his head into her palm.

Her unmarked palm. The doctor’s binding had died with him, as he’d unwittingly told them it would.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” Alice coaxed the little creature to drop his treasure into her hand and then gasped.

It was an enormous diamond-and-emerald ring.

“Oh! The treasure! Poor Captain Marvelous. What happened?”

Edge snorted. “Poor Captain Marvelous nothing. By the time we calculated the current value of the treasure, taking into account market fluctuations, the price of gold, the—”

Meara poked him in the chest. “Get on with it!”

“Yes, well. The treasure is worth around twenty million dollars. His half, which he wants to go to his heirs, is, of course, ten million. We’re working out the details now.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “We have ten million dollars? Ten million dollars? The rescue—it’s going to be amazing!”

“The wedding is going to be amazing,” Meara said dreamily.

Ryan came over and hugged Alice, her eyes tearing up, but then she shook a finger at her. “No ugly bridesmaids’ dresses, okay?”

Meara snorted. “What do you think you’re talking about, ugly bridesmaids’ dresses? It’s going to be a double wedding. You and Bane and Alice and Hunter!”

Ryan made a squeaking sound that sounded exactly like Ferret Bueller, but Bane’s expression, looking at Ryan, was pure satisfaction.

Hunter gazed down at Alice and knew exactly how Bane felt.

Meara caught Hunter’s attention and nodded discreetly to the ice chest in the corner of the room and then herded everyone out, even Charlie and the little ferret. Alice was going to need to feed very soon, and Hunter would have to introduce her to the things he’d been learning about his—their—new existence.

But for now…

“I know you don’t remember, and you were dying, and it all happened too fast,” he began.

“Hunter—”

“No. I need to tell you this before life and the rest of the world push their way back into this moment. Alice, I love you. I love you with everything I am and everything I will ever be. I love your kindness and your courage. I love your beauty, inside and out. I love everything about you and want nothing more than for you to share my life forever.”

He kissed her hands, one after the other, and got down on one knee, holding out the ring that Ferret Bueller had so helpfully stolen from his jacket pocket. “Will you marry me?”

“Hunter.” She smiled at him with so much love that it stole his breath. “I’ve known since I met you that my heart would be safe with you. I love you with everything I am and will be. I love your humor and your compassion. I love your body and your mind. I especially love the niceness you keep pretending you don’t want to have. Will you be my best friend and lover forever? Will you marry me?”

He slid the ring on her finger, swept her into his arms, and kissed her.

“You’d better say yes,” Meara called out from outside the room.

Alice started to laugh. “We’d be afraid to say no, now.”

“I’ll love you forever, even with your ferrets and raccoons and demon-dragons, Alice Darlington. You made my life whole when you stepped into it with that silly raccoon.”

She gave him a thoughtful look. “Alice Darlington Evans has a nice ring to it. And I was thinking we could add snake and rat rescue, now that we have all that money.”

“Maybe in a different building,” he said, trying not to grimace. “Now kiss me until I forget how scared I was that you wouldn’t wake up.”

She grinned at him. “Could those maybe be naked kisses?”

“I think that could be arranged,” he said, instantly going hard.

Just as he bent his head to hers, she jerked back and stared at him, wide-eyed. “I’m a vampire.”

“I know.”

“I can fly.”

He started to get a bad feeling. “Well, maybe, with some practice, but—”

“Ryan,” she shouted, leaping up. “Let’s go jump off the roof!”

Hunter leaned back in his chair and smiled.

It was going to be a wonderful life.