#Chapter 423 – Run Away Bride
Cora
As Roger drives down the dark highway, I type out a quick message to Ella on my phone: Hey! I’m going to be MIA for a couple of days. Roger and I are taking some time to ourselves. I’m sorry to leave you hanging with all the work we have to do at the camps will you forgive me?
I bite my lip anxiously when I press send and stare at my phone, waiting for the reply.
“Quit that,” Roger says, glancing at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Worrying about it,” he says, giving a little shrug. “She’s not your boss, Cora.”
“Yeah well, Dominic is your boss,” I point out, raising my eyebrows. “Did you even text him?”
“Nah,” he says, grinning broadly. I’ll let Ella break it to him and just face his wrath when we come back.”
“If we come back,” I say, sufficiently relaxed by his encouragement and leaning back against my chair. “Who knows. Maybe we’ll like eloping so much that we just…stay.”
“I encourage this,” Roger says, laughing. “Thoroughly. We can probably assume new identities, just completely abandon our lives and our responsibilities.”
I laugh at the idea and look at the window, the thrill and excitement of elopement still rushing through me. ” Yeah, but then we won’t get to see Rafe grow up. And little no-name here won’t have his best friend.” I run my hand passively over my stomach, sending a little pulse of happy down the bond to the baby so that he can feel my excitement along with me. But he doesn’t send anything back – probably asleep. Or whatever.
Who knows, with these magical mystery babies Ella and I have. “About that,” Roger says, glancing at me again. “Do you have ideas? For names, for the baby?”
I turn to him, surprised. “Do you know? I actually…don’t.”
Roger laughs at me, shaking his head. “Let me guess. Ella had her names picked out from childhood, and you never thought about it once.”
“Hit the nail on the head, Sinclair,” I say, winking at him, making him laugh. “It’s almost like you’ve met us or something…uncanny.”
He laughs again and then we let the moment sit for a while before he speaks again. “Well, I have some thoughts,” he says quietly.
“Really?” I say, sitting up straight and looking at him eagerly. “You have ideas?”
“I’m not stone, Cora,” he says, smirking and tossing me a little glare. ” I think about our child, and his future, and what I’d prefer to call him. Or not to call him.”
“Okay,” I say, grinning. “What names are off the list, then?”
“Edgar,” he says, immediate, and I burst into laughter.
“Why Edgar?”
“Because,” he says, serious. “Any name with ‘gar’ in it is mean to a little kid. And I knew someone named Edgar growing up and he was…a dick.”
I laugh harder at this, agreeing. “All right, Edgar’s off the list. What’s on it?”
He hesitates for a second and I reach out, shoving his shoulder a little. “Tell me!”
“No,” he says, sitting back and putting on his most stubborn expression. “You’ll accuse me of being sentimental. I want this to be a discussion, so you have to come up with some too. And then we’ll decide together.”
“Roger,” I say, rolling my eyes but unable to keep myself from smiling at my secretly-sweet mate. “That’s the most sentimental idea I’ve ever heard so much more sentimental than just telling me the names you like.”
“Well then give this discussion to me as a mating gift,” he says, nodding. “I get to make that request at least, don’t I ?
“Oh, sure,” I say, sighing happily. ” Whatever the groom wants on his wedding day – that’s what they say, isn’t it?”
He glares at me a little, making me laugh, and then we continue our journey into the night. Roger reaches out and takes my hand as we drive quickly towards the coast, giving my palm a squeeze and passing his excitement to me along the bond.
And I pass it back to him, letting him know that I’m just teasing – and that I’m all worked up about this too, feeling sentimental and excited and thrilled. Even if I haven’t been looking forward to this evening for my whole life? I can’t wait for it now.
“What do you think?” I whisper as Roger and I step out of the car and look at the tiny little beach cottage sitting before us. It’s lit from within by warm yellow light – I had the owner come and open it up for us so that it would be cozy when we got here. The whole house is probably as big as our living room and kitchen put together, but when I saw it online it was just so adorable that…
Well. I knew it was perfect.
“It’s perfect,” Roger says, turning to grin at me over the roof of the car. I smile right back at him, so pleased that he feels precisely as I do.
Then, without another word, we both spring into action – Roger going to the trunk to get our bags and me moving to the door of the little bungalow with the white box under my arm, punching in the code to unlock it. When Roger joins me at the threshold, I push the door open and we step inside.
“Oh,” I say, my hands going immediately to my mouth as I stare into the prettiest, tiniest little beach house that I’ve ever seen. There’s a little kitchen space off to our left, and a sofa off to the right, but the majority of the house is the bedroom directly ahead.
“Wow,” Roger says, and I look up to see him blinking in surprise. I grin and follow his gaze to the beautiful bed decked out with white linens and beyond it the wall of windows that looks directly out onto the beach, and beyond that, the ocean. “Wow, Cora,” he says again, and I look up to see him smiling down at me.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Do you know what it reminds me of?”
“Yes,” I say, laughing a little.
He lowers his face to mine, nudging my nose with his, urging me to say it.
“My dreamscape,” I whisper, my face breaking into a big smile. Because even though that bed was directly on the beach with no house or facilities around it…well. We’re corporeal now, and we need a kitchen and a bathroom and a roof.
But everything else? I knew it the moment I saw the pictures. It’s so precisely like I dreamed it would be that you’d think I’d created it myself.
“Come on,” Roger says, leading me into the house so we can have a better look around. He peeks into all the corners his Alpha training of course immediately going into protection mode, making sure we’re safe – as I go directly to the back wall and press the windows open. To my delight, they turn out to be not windows but doors that fold completely open so that the whole wall opens directly onto the beach.
Eager, I press them all back and then lean against the wall, looking out over the sand at the ocean stretching out before us.
A few moments later my mate comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me back against him, lowering his face to my hair and inhaling my scent. I reach one arm up behind me and wrap my hand around the back of his neck, feeling the softness of his skin against my palms, loving the way the short hairs at the base of his head brush against my fingertips.
“So, is it everything you were looking for, Mrs. Sinclair?” he murmurs to me and I smile, a little shiver going through me to hear the name. My name.
“It’s everything I never knew I wanted,” I whisper back, feeling so happy and complete that I can hardly bear it. And then I turn in my mate’s arms, and tilt my head back to look at him, and I smile.
And my mate bends down a little, shifting his arms so that they move from my waist to just below my rear, and then he tightens his arms and stands up straight, taking me with him. I laugh then, running my hands through his hair and kissing him. After a long moment, he pulls back, just half an inch. “To bed?”
But slyly, I shake my head and wiggle. “Put me down. I want to…do something.”
Curious, Roger puts me on the ground and I grab the white box off the bed, grinning. Then, I point to the little iron fireplace next to the bed. “Will you light that?” I ask.
He nods to me, just once, and then watches me as I disappear with the box into the bathroom.
Because I might be a wolf in my soul, but…I want one part of this to be human. So as Roger lights a fire I untie the silver ribbon on the box.
And lift out my wedding dress.
