Page 7

Chapter 7

Claire

T hey say a woman always remembers the dress she gets married in.

I hate that they’re right.

Because I’ll remember this one forever.

It’s wrapping me like a memory I didn’t know I’d been avoiding, a whisper of the girl I swore I left behind.

Soft cream colored satin slips over my curves like moonlight poured into fabric.

The fit is perfect, clinging where it should, floating over the rest like a breath I haven’t taken yet.

The bodice is sheer in places, delicate wildflower embroidery twisting up over the illusion fabric like vines reaching for something just out of sight.

Dewy seed pearls glisten at the throat and hips, an echo of a dream I stopped letting myself have years ago.

I look like a real bride–not someone dragged here by blackmail and threats from the man who shattered me before I even knew what love really was.

And yet the mirror, cruel thing that it is, reflects a version of me that looks…

serene.

As if I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life.

I stare with numb curiosity, like she’s a stranger who borrowed my face and is playing pretend in lace and grief.

“God,” I murmur, venom-less.

Because how can I possibly hate something that looks so right and feels so wrong?

“I hate how good I look.”

“You look like you just stepped out of a dream,” Lizzy says, flopping into one of the cushioned chairs by the dressing table.

She’s still rocking her combat boots under the dusky green dress Fiona found for her, and somehow she makes rebellion look regal.

Her hair has been reluctantly tamed into curls that frame her face, but a few already bounce loose, defiant as ever.

“A fever-dream, mind you. Like if a cursed forest spirit was also a runway model.”

Her grin is effortless, and I manage half of one.

I pivot slowly in front of the mirror, watching the skirt sway.

It’s simple, sleek.

But the way it moves with my body, the embroidery singing down the fabric—it’s stunning.

The wildflowers at the hem bloom in pale blues and faded meadow pinks.

So subtle that they blend in when I move just right.

I shouldn’t love it.

I shouldn’t love any of this.

But some stubborn, wounded part of me aches with the beauty of it.

Because this dress doesn’t just fit me.

It understands me.

“I know this wasn’t your choice,” Lizzy says in a softer voice, tapping her phone against her palm.

“But if it had been, I mean really been... this is the dress, right? The one you dreamed about?”

I hesitate.

And then, releasing a long breath, I nod.

I hadn’t told a soul about that sixteen-year-old version of me.

The girl who saved wedding inspiration photos and imagined Liam lifting her veil like he’d look past every other future and choose her.

Back then, I believed in forever and in the look he used to give me, even if it was only for seconds at a time.

That girl?

She’s still here.

Buried under hard-won independence and cynicism and scars I still trace in silence.

But this dress?

It’s her dreams made silk.

And that feels like betrayal.

“To be honest,” Lizzy says after a moment, breaking the tension, “I was prepared to throw something when I saw it. I was hoping it’d be hideous. Sequins. Tulle. Maybe a rhinestone heart stuck above your ass. Something I could rage against. But this?” She gestures with one hand, overwhelmed.

“This is a love letter. Every stitch.”

I go still.

“What?” I ask carefully.

My stomach tightens, caught between rising heat and a far-off kind of grief.

She shrugs.

“I mean, I was assuming the O’Reilly Mafia Wedding Committee was going to pick some dress off a rack labeled “Classy but Obedient.

” But this had to be picked out by someone who knows you.

”

Before I can answer, a new voice cuts in from the doorway.

“It was,” says Fiona O’Reilly, her voice dipped in velvet sincerity with something flint-like underneath.

“And he was adamant about the dress having wildflowers.”

Lizzy sits bolt upright.

I turn slowly.

Liam’s mother stands just inside the room, composed and sharp in tailored navy slacks and a silk blouse.

No pearls.

No nonsense.

Just a woman carved from quiet storms.

She watches me like I’m a puzzle she already knows how to solve with patience and grace.

“What did you say?” I ask, the question scraped raw from my throat.

Fiona steps deeper inside while the door clicks softly shut behind her.

“He insisted,” she says simply, “on wildflowers. Specifically cornflower blue and foxglove purple. Down to the edge of your skirt.”

My mouth goes dry.

“Liam picked this dress for me?”

She nods.

“He approved every detail. The cut. The fabric. The thread. Told the seamstress you’d want something timeless. No glitter, no sequins. Just something... honest.” Her voice gentles, but not with pity.

“The same for the ceremony and reception details. He refused to let anyone else take over the planning.”

That admission sinks straight into the places I thought were closed off for good.

I can’t answer.

Not with the way my heart is lodged in my throat.

Because suddenly I’m sixteen again, wide-eyed and cracked open, hearing the way he used to say my name.

Feeling the careful way he never quite looked at me, too long, when he was with my brother.

And I’m telling myself, fiercely, that those buried feelings don’t matter now.

That the affection I once clung to with shaking hands won’t turn into vines around my throat.

But they’re still there.

That old love.

I don’t think it ever died; just turned small and hidden after the void left inside after my brother’s funeral.

“You okay?” Lizzy’s voice floats in.

I nod before I realize I have.

She picks up on it quickly.

“I’ll give you guys space,” she mutters, eyes narrowing at Fiona before softening toward me.

“Holler if she gets weird or asks you to smuggle guns or something.”

With that, she’s gone in a sweep of sass and suede boots.

The air tightens as silence falls between me and Fiona.

“May I?” she asks, nodding toward a velvet chair near the window.

The golden light halos around her and I think about the times I followed my big brother to the O’Reilly’s house and saw her drinking tea in her backyard.

I nod and sit down stiff-backed across from her.

She pours two teacups with deliberate, elegant movements.

Everything about her is restrained power dressed in linen and subtleties.

I wonder if Liam gets that from her.

Or if it’s what he learned watching her survive this world with her chin high and heart guarded.

“I remember always finding you on the back porch,” she says softly.

“Braids still damp from the pool, following your brother and Liam like his little shadow. You’d always demand Liam make lemonade, and you always said he cut the lemon slices too thick.”

I blink, caught off guard by the memory.

Her gaze softens.

“You were just a girl. And Liam, well, he was already shouldering more than most grown men. Even then.”

I stare at my teacup, the delicate china so different than the mugs she would offer when I was over at their home.

“I’m not here to try to convince you that the way Liam is going about this wedding and mating ceremony is right–”

I shoot my gaze up, holding her too-understanding eyes with my own.

“Then why aren’t you stopping it? Why aren’t you helping me leave instead of taking a stroll down memory lane with me?”

The bone china teacup in her hands clicks gently in its saucer as she sets it down.

“Though I wish it were different, Liam isn’t doing this just because of some legacy or alpha obligation,” she says gently.

“He’s responding to something older, something that he has no choice in either. You’re his mate.”

I chew the bottom of my lip as I consider everything I know about werewolves.

After Seth shared Liam’s secret with me, I researched and learned everything I could about werewolves and their cultures.

I spent too many days daydreaming about Liam declaring me his mate.

My hands tighten on the teacup handle.

I hate the way something in me reacts—how the old ache, the broken heart I swore I buried, flutters behind my breastbone like it’s listening.

“If I’m his fated mate, then why did he cut me off?” I demand.

The breath at the end of the question trembles.

“Why did he humiliate me and then disappear for a decade? And Seth’s funeral? They were best friends and even if he broke my heart, he could have still been there for me as my friend. I needed him.”

Fiona looks at me for a long moment.

Not with pity.

Something clearer.

“Because Liam wasn’t allowed to be there.”

The air staggers from my lungs.

She leans forward, tea forgotten, and lays her hand over mine.

“Your parents gave my husband a very clear message. Liam was never to show himself around your family again. Threatened him with the police.” Her voice falters slightly before smoothing over, “They blamed him. Your father, especially.” She swallows.

“Perhaps not fairly. But completely.”

I stare at the velvet stitching on the nap of my skirt so I don’t have to look at her.

“He wanted to come,” she tells me.

“He got dressed, managed it on his own despite the cast on his arm. He had flowers. He stood just outside our old gate for nearly an hour, heart cracking every second. And then John talked him out of it.”

Fiona shakes her head slowly.

“We all knew it would only make the grief worse if they dragged him away in cuffs.”

The silence afterward is broken only by the delicate tick of the wall clock and the low chime of wind against the glass panes.

“He honored the distance they demanded,” she adds softly.

“He stayed gone, even when it broke him, because he thought it was the right thing to do. Because he believed your world would be better without him in it.”

Would it have been, though?

After the way my parents used Seth’s funeral service as a way to deepen business and political connections, I couldn’t forgive them.

I make the appropriate calls on holidays and their birthdays, but otherwise I want nothing to do with them.

“And suddenly now he decides he’s not just going to be in my life, but force me to marry him?” I snap, though the words land dull in my throat.

“Blackmailing me with a video and dressing me up and parading me in front of all of his friends? How is any of this okay?”

Fiona doesn’t flinch.

“He’s terrified and I doubt he even realizes it,” she says.

“He’s still that young man you once knew and cared about, but with sharper teeth and many more scars. The world he lives in is harsh and nothing is given. He’s learned to burn the bridge to make sure no one else crosses it. None of this excuses how he’s hurt you, Claire. But it might explain it.”

We sit in silence after that; two women pulled into the same world.

“What am I supposed to do?” I hate how defeated I sound.

Fiona stands and rounds the table to rest a hand on my shoulder.

“Demand answers from him,” she advises.

“And trust in fate.”

Later, I stand at the balcony, wind stirring the hem of the dress I’m trying not to love, while watching people set up chairs and an altar in the back garden.

He remembered cornflowers.

He remembered summer breath and delicate lace and wild hope stitched into silk.

And I hate how part of me still wants to believe in that.

But wanting Liam and trusting him?

Not the same thing.

I might still ache for him.

Still tremble when he looks at me too long and my instincts scream to submit to him.

But I’ve learned how to be on my own.

And tonight, when I walk through that courtyard in this beautiful gown, I’ll remember every wound behind each petal.

Every slice he carved into my heart.

This dress might be his declaration of love.

But beneath it, I’m covered in armor stitched from the ashes of the girl he left behind.