Page 108 of Of Claws and Fangs

It was a promise he might not be able to keep, she knew that, but she knew he was her daughter’s best bet.

“And Bee. I’ll see you just after sunset.”

“Mama—”

“Is asleep with the sun.” And he was gone.

Bedelia

Bedelia checked on her mama one last time. She was asleep. Snoring softly. She closed the door and padded barefoot away, her favorite housedress swishing around her calves. It was an hour after sunset. She settled on the screened porch, stretched out on a chaise lounge. On the table between the two reclining chairs were two bottles of wine, a white in a terra-cotta chiller for her and an unopened red for Link. She sipped, waiting. Knowing, from the moment he woke, that he was thinking about her. Knowing that he was on his way. By full dark, Linc was here.

The outer perimeterdinged, a soft note. The central warddinged, his distinctive notes, as he walked through the woods. Bedelia’s heart leaped, and this time she didn’t try to still her heart. Where once she had made him knock, mostly to let him know that the power between them was hers, she deliberately pressed the bloodstone amulet between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand.

Thehedge of thornsfell in that delicate sprinkling of darting fireflies. The lights of the fallinghedgecascaded across Linc, brushing over himand bursting into that rich red color as they fell, his unique welcome. When he crossed thehedge, she closed it and dropped the inner ward. He stepped onto the deck, opened the screened porch door, and entered. He laid a single red rose across her lap, opened the red, and poured a taste.

“Nice,” he said, taking the seat beside her, as if he had always done so. Tonight he didn’t smell of barbeque. He smelled of a fresh shower and his expression said that his heart was full of hope.

“Thank you,” Bedelia said. “Thank you for making certain my witches were safe. If it hadn’t been for you and your people, we would have been dead or furry by now.”

Linc made a softhmmmingsound.

“And thank you for your part in saving Liz and Cia.”

“They are brave and powerful, and I am mighty proud of them,” he said. “Have you ever told them? About us? About me?”

“No. But I’m rethinking that now. They have a right to know about you.”

“I’d be honored for them to know me. And the other girls.”

“The problem comes not with the girls. But because of Evangelina, and between us, as it always has been.”

“Bedelia, forgive my interruption. But I came here to say something.” He put down his glass, swiveled his long legs to the side facing her, and moved the table out of the way. He put her glass aside too and took her hands. “When you ran me off, I was still young for a Mithran. Hotheaded. Difficult. Selfish. I was full of piss and vinegar, and I believed any woman should be tickled pink to be with me. I did not regard you with the respect and honor I should have. And you left.” He went silent, staring down at their hands, his thumbs rubbing over her knuckles.

“When you left me, I fell into the vampire ways for all I was worth, thinking that if you thought I was horrible, then I’d just go ahead and be horrible. I hated myself for every single one of those moments. I missed you every single one of those moments. I regretted what I had done and who I had become every single moment. Then one night I woke up and... I was done being a man without honor.

“In the last fifteen years, I have neither slept with nor had sexual relations with another person, not a Mithran, not human, not anyone. I came dangerously close with your Evangelina, under her compulsion, but I didnot consummate with her. I was able to keep that much of myself from her, because of my love for you. Because you didn’t want a man who couldn’t be true to you. I have been faithful to my love for you for fifteen years. I do not deserve the love of a woman like you. This I know well. But I profess my love to you, forever, for as long as you shall live. Bedelia Everhart Shaddock, will you allow me to court you once again? To show you, to prove to you that I am yours now and always?”

The bond between them was open, free, and she knew he spoke the truth. Bedelia was smiling softly, her eyes on their joined hands. “Yes.”

Linc leaned over and kissed her hands, one and then the other. Moving slowly, in case she might pull away, he leaned in and kissed her gently on the mouth. He was smiling and so was she when he eased away.

“Linc,” she said, softly. “We still have a lot of talking to do. But. Something you ought to know. You can’t live here because Mama would turn you into a toad if she knew we were taking up again, but I never did sign the divorce papers. We are still, legally, married.”

She yelped at the sudden motion, and then she was in his arms, being held like a baby, or like a starlet in an old movie, and he was twirling them. Laughing. That laughter twined through her own heart and set her soul free. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held ontight.