Page 57 of Awakened Gifts
Jase’s arms tighten around me, and I blow out a breath. There’s no way anyone besides me can face Alice.
“Damn straight,” Mom growls, glaring at me.
I have a feeling she’s going to light me up when she gets me alone.
Does she know Alice is her mother yet?
Jase gets close to my ear and whispers, “No.”
I don’t want her to know. It’ll just make it harder on her.
“She’ll find out eventually,” he says too low for anyone else to hear, even though all eyes suddenly become fixed on us.
“No private conversations,” Kellan says in a low growl. “The two of you aren’t leaving us out of this fight.”
As if I’d take Jase into the line of fire.
“That’s not what we’re discussing,” I say, widening my eyes in a silent plead for him to shut up.
He seems to catch on when his eyes offer a fleeting look toward my mother. Mom tilts her head, on the verge of saying something, when Jase beats her to it.
“You’re not fighting her without us. No one here is individually strong enough to beat her. But together, we might just stand a chance.”
“Well, time is running out,” I remind him. “For all we know, she could already be invincible.”
“Nah,” Kellan interjects. “If she was invincible, she’d have already found us. My guess is that it’s taking longer than she thought it would.”
Jase picks up the bag Rex gave us earlier, and he holds it up. “Seriously, we need to get out of our makeshift togas and get dressed.”
Kellan smirks when Jase wraps an arm around my chest, guiding me toward the back of a blacked-out SUV. The second I’m in the backseat, Jase tugs the sheet off me, and presses his lips against mine. I hear the dividing window rolling up, darkening the back even more as he pulls me to be astride him.
I giggle lightly while willingly pressing my bare body against his. “Before we go after Alice, I want us to get married. We can have a big wedding once Alice is dead, but I want something before we go after her.”
His confidence that we’ll win is either fake or real, but he’s so believable that I don’t know which one.
“I’ll marry you right now. In my sheet,” I say against his lips, smiling when he does.
He holds me to him while yelling through the door. “Change of plans,” he says to no one in particular. “First we head back to the nearest compound so that Aria and I can get married. Then we go after Alice.”
I hear a few sharp intakes of air, a couple of sighs, and then a few snickers. It seems as though there’s never a good time for us to get married. Might as well do it before we face the monster that can kill us all.
Chapter 19
ARIA
Fumbling with the clasp on my dress, I blow my hair out of my eyes, leaning over at an awkward angle to try and get the stubborn thing to close. What am I doing? My gifts work now.
Dropping the clasp with my hands, I use my gifts to finish doing up the impossible thing. Once I feel it fall into place, I look into the mirror and feel the tears in my eyes.
“Absolutely stunning,” Mom says as she walks in, her own tears already falling as I turn to smile at her.
I glance down at the black lace dress that has violet trim and various other purplish accents. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Yeah, I’m beaming.
She comes to push my hair back, and then she pulls a beautiful, black sparrow hair pin out of her own hair and puts it into mine. I can’t help but grin when her smile grows and her eyes gloss over even more.
“Your dad would have loved to have seen this.”
I laugh a little while dabbing my tears delicately with a tissue. “No he wouldn’t have. He might have killed Jase by now. Or Kellan. Or both.”