Chapter 142 A New Beginning
For a second, Aria couldn’t speak.
Everything around her blurred into color and sound and light, but none of it settled.
None of it made sense except for one thing.
Kane.
On one knee.
Looking at her like there was no one else in the world.
Her chest tightened, her breath catching somewhere between disbelief and something far steadier.
Something certain.
“Yes,” she said.
The room broke open.
Cheers came from every direction at once, loud and unrestrained, the kind that filled the chest before the ears fully registered them.
Someone in the back let out a sharp whistle.
Glasses lifted.
Laughter rolled through the crowd in waves.
Kane slid the ring onto her finger.
She looked down at it for exactly one second.
When he finally pulled back, he didn’t move far.
“You’re sure?” he asked quietly.
Aria let out a soft, incredulous laugh.
“I just said yes in front of everyone we know.”
“I need to hear it again,” he said.
Her smile softened.
“I’m sure.”
That was all he needed.
Then he was standing and his hands were on her face and he kissed her, and the room got louder, and she didn’t hear any of it.
When they finally broke apart, Maya was already there.
She didn’t say anything.
She just pulled Aria into her arms and held on.
“I knew,” Maya murmured into her shoulder.
“You always know,” Aria said.
Maya pulled back, her eyes bright.
“And I am never sorry about it.”
Marcus stepped forward next, extending his hand to Kane.
Kane took it, then pulled him in briefly, one hand at the back of his neck.
“Good man,” Kane said quietly.
Marcus said nothing.
But his expression said enough.
After that, the night folded into itself, warm and unhurried.
People came to them in a steady current.
Embraces.
Raised glasses.
Words that Aria tried to hold onto and knew she wouldn’t fully remember by morning.
A woman from the eastern territory gripped both her hands and told her she had waited years for this.
An older pack elder clapped Kane on the shoulder twice without speaking, which seemed to mean more to him than anything else.
At some point, someone put music back on.
The atmosphere shifted from ceremony into something looser.
Easier.
People drifted back into their own conversations, their own laughter.
The night stretched and settled and became exactly what it was supposed to be.
Aria stayed close to Kane.
His hand found the small of her back between conversations, a steady, quiet anchor.
She kept glancing at the ring without meaning to.
A small, involuntary thing that she suspected would take weeks to stop doing.
Maya caught her doing it at least three times and said nothing, which was somehow worse.
By the time they left, the crowd had thinned to close friends and lingering voices.
Goodbyes stretched longer than they needed to.
Someone made them promise a proper celebration once the dust settled.
“Name the date,” Kane told them.
Aria squeezed his hand.
The drive home was quiet in the best way.
The house was still when they got back.
The twins had been put to bed hours ago.
The housekeeper had left a lamp on in the front room and the soft light spread across the floor in a warm, even line.
Kane went to the kitchen.
She heard the low sound of a cabinet opening, glass against the counter.
Aria sat down on the couch and looked at her hand again.
The ring caught the lamp light the same way it had caught the lights in the hall.
She turned her hand slightly, just to watch it.
Kane came back with two glasses and sat beside her.
He held one out.
She took it.
He raised his.
“To a new life,” he said.
She touched her glass to his.
“To a new life.”
They drank.
For a moment neither of them spoke, and it was the most comfortable silence she could remember.
The house settled around them.
Outside, nothing moved.
“I’ve been thinking,” Aria said.
Kane looked at her.
“About the wedding.”
She turned toward him slightly.
“I don’t want anything large.”
“Define large.”
“Not that.”
She gestured vaguely in the direction they had come from.
“Tonight was perfect. But a wedding…”
She shook her head.
“I want it small. People who actually know us. No ceremony for the sake of appearances.”
Kane was quiet for a moment.
“Pack elders will expect to be included.”
“Then we include them. But that’s where it ends.”
He nodded slowly.
“Agreed.”
She turned the glass in her hand.
“And I want it outside. Not a hall. Not a building.”
She paused.
“Somewhere that doesn’t have a history we have to rewrite.”
Something moved in his expression.
Quiet and understanding.
“There’s land on the northern edge of the territory,” he said.
“Above the ridge. You can see the full valley from there.”
Aria looked at him.
“I didn’t know you’d been thinking about this.”
“I’ve been thinking about this for longer than you know,” he said.
She held his gaze for a moment, then looked back down at the ring.
“The twins will want to be involved,” she said.
“Leo will want to choose something. He’ll argue about it.”
“He argues about everything.”
“He gets that from you.”
Kane said nothing, but the corner of his mouth moved.
Aria leaned back into the couch.
“Lily will pretend she doesn’t care and then cry.”
“She also gets that from me.”
She laughed, soft and tired and completely content.
They stayed like that for a while.
No urgency.
No next thing waiting.
Just the lamp and the quiet and the weight of a night that had gone exactly right.
Aria had almost set her glass down when she heard the front door.
A knock, then Marcus’s voice from the other side.
“Still up?”
Kane looked at her.
She nodded.
“Come in,” he called.
The door opened.
Marcus stepped inside, Maya just behind him.
Both still dressed from the evening.
Both with an expression that didn’t match the night they had just left.
Aria sat up slightly.
Maya’s eyes moved to her briefly, apologetic in a way that was hard to read.
Marcus stopped a few feet into the room.
He looked at Kane directly.
“I hate to bring this here tonight,” he said.
“Of all nights.”
He paused.
“But there’s something you need to see.”
The warmth in the room didn’t leave all at once.
It just quietly stepped aside.
Kane set his glass down.
“Show me,” he said.