ONE
ONE
EOGHAN
Pride wasn’t something I felt often.
It was, in fact, something I felt rarely.
But as I watched my wife waddle onto the stage from the steps at the side, ’proud’ didn’t cut it.
Elation soared through me.
There were shadows under Inessa’s eyes from the last couple sleepless nights because our kid, Bump, had decided to turn into a basketball and it was tough for her to get comfortable.
I’d watched her drag concealer under her eyes, and she’d done a good job of hiding those marks from the world, but I noticed everything when it came to her.
From day one, I always had.
Aside from those signs of fatigue, her blonde hair gleamed in the spotlight. Her cheeks were rosy pink. She wore a neat Kate Spade dress that I’d picked for her as a celebration gift, which made her belly look smaller thanks to something called an Empire waistline, and she wore heels that we’d argued over this morning.
Heels that I wanted her to only wear in the bedroom now that she was six months into her pregnancy.
They were four-inch platforms that I knew she’d slipped on to rub me the wrong way.
It had worked.
But for all that she’d annoyed me by being a brat this morning, the joy I found in watching her fulfill her dreams of becoming an interior designer diminished that irritation almost entirely.
At my side, Aidan, my eldest brother, cheered, whistling into the crowd which triggered the rest of my demon siblings and their wives into whooping and clapping.
She jolted in surprise, but her beaming smile hit me straight in the heart as she heard her family rooting for her.
That smile packed more of a punch than a fucking bullet.
She squinted into the light but I knew she saw us on the upper levels of the audience where the filthy rich were watching their spawn collect their diplomas.
Knew it because her eyes drifted onto mine and held until the dean cleared his throat and her head whipped around to shake his hand.
Annoyed, I rubbed my chin as I noticed his prolonged hold then cracked my knuckles as I watched her tug on it as if she were fighting to be released.
“Cheer up, you miserable bastard,” Brennan grumbled in my ear. I didn’t bother glowering at my elder brother as he drawled, “You’d think you were about to get into a fight.”
Little did he fucking know—I was.
But I wasn’t miserable about it.
I was excited.
I’d been on a three-month-long promise. Inessa had made me vow that I wouldn’t do anything until she graduated.
Well, here she was.
Graduating.
I narrowed my eyes on the weasel who was about to feel a world of hurt, and I murmured, “I’m happy.”
“You need to tell your face that.”