“Everything is bonkers. That’s why we’re getting married.”
Her exhale emerged in a rush. “I don’t understand.”
Elias broke eye contact, staring out through the front windshield, and she got the odd feeling he was evading somehow. “Like you said, there is a war brewing. If something were to ever happen to me, I’d want you to have what’s mine.” He softened the blow of his words with a wry smile. “You’ll only need to put the credit card in your name.”
“Stop talking like this,” she breathed, ripping her hand away and securing the blanket more tightly around her body. Otherwise the ice forming in her blood was going to freeze her to death. “I don’t like weddings.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
The quickness of her answer brought his head around. “Thank you,” he said gruffly, before facing forward again with a firm set to his jaw. “St. Andronicus Monastery.”
As they drove, snow began falling from the sky, the flakes light at first, but growing heavier by the time they arrived outside the church. The stone turret seemed to reach up to the moon, the carved exterior lit in a silver glow. Gas street lamps were lit and flickering outside, but there was no other light, save the quarter moon. Elias helped her from the back of the car, tucking her into his side, but when they would have climbed the church steps, he led her down a small path around back instead. They entered a small park, trees on either side blocking the wind and alleviating the harshest of the cold.
Up ahead, nestled in a dense copse of trees, there was a small structure made of stone, a round, gold dome on top. The door was open, light spilling out from within.
“When did you plan all this?”
His chuckle warmed her further. “I might have had an ulterior motive in compelling you to sleep.”
A smile spread across her mouth. “Sneaky. I like it.”
There was a priest standing at the altar when they walked inside, a bible tucked between his crossed arms and an ample belly. Apart from a slight inclination of his head, the priest didn’t acknowledge them, but she didn’t care, because the interior of the small, gold-gilded chapel was busy stealing her breath. It glowed like a jewel, candles bringing the gold plated walls to life. There were no flowers, save a single bouquet of white roses and Elias handed it to her with so much emotion in his eyes, she was surprised the blooms didn’t multiply and fill the entire magical chapel.
She let the blanket around her shoulders slough to the ground and she pressed the bouquet to her breasts, following Elias to the altar. Briefly, she glanced up to see the moon glowing in an overhead window, a scattering of stars twinkling at its feet. “There are no better witnesses than these symbols of nighttime…” she whispered. “Temnota moya.”
“Please.” Elias stepped closer, eyes glittering, arrested on her face. He handed two gold bands to the priest who placed them in the center of his bible. “Please make this woman my wife.”
The ceremony was traditionally Russian, so Roksana had to translate in quiet murmurs every time the priest paused, but her double acknowledgement of every single word only added to the gravity of what was taking place. She was marrying a vampire. But he was so much more and always had been. Elias was the man she’d once loved, the man she’d fallen for a second time against all odds, a protector, warrior, confidant, lover. The one her soul searched for every moment of the day and night, incomplete until they were close.
And she was all those things to him, as well.
The truth of that radiated from his tall body, the heart she’d convinced to beat again.
It was in the way he kissed her when the priest declared them man and wife, blissfully unaware he’d just united a vampire and a slayer in a union that would shake the underworld.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
His slayer was growing weary of being carried everywhere, but she indulged him one last time, allowing him to ferry her over the threshold of their one-room cabin. They’d only driven a mile from the church to the place he’d rented over the phone during their flight, but it might as well have taken a goddamn month. He needed his mate more with every step he took, every rap of his pulse. She seemed to know it, too, turning her knowing smile into his chest, the bouquet of white roses dangling from her hand.
Everything in the cabin had been prepared as specified. A fire sputtered and crackled in the hearth, the windows were covered with black out curtains and he scented food for Roksana in the mini-fridge. There was champagne, too, chilling in a silver bucket, even if drinking it would only have an effect on one of them.