Chef’s face got very red and his mouth grew thin, but he didn’t move.
Magnolia stepped closer to him, glaring at Einar protectively. “I didn’t write to you because anything has changed. I’m not coming back, and I’m not leaving my mate.”
Einar looked at her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t ask you to,” he said gently. “I was wrong to, before.”
That was clearly not the answer Chef and Magnolia were expecting, and they exchanged wary glances.
“I was a young king at the time,” Einar continued. “I thought I needed to toe the line, play by all the rules. You were supposed to honor the marriage contract and Chet was supposed to honor his duty. I took it personally when you chose instead to honor each other.”
He held out an envelope, sealed with gold and red wax. “A gift from Their Majesties Signy and Kai Natt och Dag af Leijona, Chet. A full pardon of your absence without leave, a commendation for your service to the crown for the long and loyal protection of our cousin, and a complete, honorable, release of your vows.”
Chef took the envelope mechanically, looking dazed as his color washed away. Magnolia gave a little noise of surprise and covered her mouth, her violet eyes wide above her hand.
Then Chef was letting the envelope fall carelessly to the tile floor as he turned and crashed to his knees at Magnolia’s feet as if he could not bear to wait another moment. “Agneta Annika Margareta Solberg af Bjorn, will you marry me?”
“I will,” Magnolia wept. “I will!”
Chef surged back up to his feet, crushing her into his embrace and kissing her with less restraint than Graham had ever witnessed in him.
Einar grinned like a boy. If the bodyguards on either side of him were the slightest bit surprised by the sight of a giant cook kissing the king’s large cousin passionately, they didn’t betray a bit of it, stone-faced behind their sunglasses.
Magnolia was the happiest person that Graham had ever known.
She never met a day without a smile, and her cheerful optimism had buoyed many people out of blue days. She enjoyed herself without limits, took pleasure in everything, and spread her joy like a small—or not-so-small—celestial body casting light into the darkness.
But Graham thought now that he had never seen her truly happy before.
Tears ran down her smiling cheeks as she kissed Chef—Chet—and laughed in delight and hugged first him, and then her cousin who had been king, and then, to their great discomfort, both of his guards.
Chef, smiling and crying, and not caring who saw, shook everyone’s hands, including Breck’s, Darla’s—she stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek—and Graham’s.
Chef’s happiness was only quieter than Magnolia’s, no less.
Graham, watching them embrace again, suddenly found purpose, in a life that had been adrift of it.
He wanted to make Alice that happy.
It didn’t matter where, or how, but he wanted to bring that kind of joy to Alice, if he could. He wanted—he needed—to make her smile like that, to weep in happiness. He would spend his entire life in pursuit of that moment, and if it were ever possible to achieve, he’d spend the rest of his life trying to do it again.
He slipped out of the restaurant through the empty kitchen—the rest of the staff had emptied onto the deck to congratulate Chef and Magnolia and ogle the visiting royalty.
As Graham took the white gravel path back to The Den, he stewed over his options... move to Minnesota, find a job... tell Alice what Scarlet was. He was willing to do all of it.
He was chewing over that last idea in particular when his lion growled near his ear and he looked up to see a figure standing outlined in the light of The Den beyond.
It was one of the human furries, he realized, just a moment before he registered the gun in the man’s hands.
There was a sharp bite at Graham’s neck that confused him a moment.
A dart, he realized, and he growled and clenched his fists. The man fired again as Graham charged him.
Graham’s swing went wide as his blood seemed to turn to sludge in his veins. All his limbs were heavy. Too heavy. His second swing hit, but had no force behind it.
The man shrugged it off. “Save your fight for the cage, Grant,” he sneered.
Graham was confused that he was somehow leaning on the man rather than hitting him. “Not... Grant...” he managed. Alice loved Graham. That was who he wanted to be.
Then darkness took him.