Page 198 of Unconditionally Yours

I want to jump him. I want to cry. I want to drag him into the wedding arch and defile the nearest flower arrangement while screaming ‘yes’ in seventeen languages, one of which I’m pretty sure is just moaning.

And he’s still looking at me like I hung the moon. Like he’d carry me across a field of emotional landmines barefoot just to hand me a donut and tell me I deserve better.

I am about to say yes.

“Absolutely not. You belong to me,” Rhys says, his voice a goddamn velvet guillotine.

I choke on my own breath.

His thumb brushes the velvet ring box like it’s my neck and he’s reminding me what I already wear there. What I begged for. What he let me have. What he owns.

“I’ll give you rules. I’ll give you purpose. I’ll give you a ring to match the collar you wear.” His smile is soft and devastating. “You’ve been mine since the first session. This is just the paperwork.”

My soul detaches from my body and immediately files for joint custody.

I am actively unwell. I am standing in the ruins of some smoldering romantic Armageddon and my legs are about to give out because he said it like a fact. Not a question. Not a plea. Just a cold, calm declaration of ownership, like he’s filing me away under Property of Rhys, Do Not Touch Unless You Have a License and a Death Wish.

I have never wanted to be someone’s legal and spiritual possession so badly in my goddamn life.

It’s not the ring. It’s not even the words. It’s the way he says “you belong to me” and I feel it like a leash around my soul. A promise. A commandment. Something I’ve already obeyed a hundred times in my mind and now I get to do it in front of God, a notary, and the flaming poultry mascot in the distance.

I am going to say yes. Or I’m going to drop to my knees and beg him to say it again slower.

Either way, I’m ruined and collared and so fucking his.

“You’re both pathetic,” Jett snarls, and he’s suddenly pulling a box from his back pocket like he’s been planning this and also trying very hard not to care. Inside is a black diamond surrounded by pink stones.

“Delilah. I hate everything but you. Marry me. We’ll commit felonies, fuck in public, and never, ever talk about our feelings. I’ll fight every single one of your enemies in alphabetical order, and then we can make out on their graves.”

Everyone is screaming.

The chicken mascot is convulsing with spiritual ecstasy or maybe heat stroke.

The bouquet in my hands pulses like a cursed egg, humming with destiny and vape residue. And I, Delilah P. Darling, criminal, goblin, chaos bitch in heels, am being proposed to.

Simultaneously.

By a gentle giant, a feral beast with anger issues and fuck-me eyes, and my control freak therapist sir, who has absolutely lost control of the situation.

“We can’t all propose,” Rhys says. “There has to be order.”

“You literally just married a woman in a caution tape veil to a man who clucks in tongues,” I snap.

Destiny howls from the altar. “Let the divine hoe choose!”

“Choose?” I echo, staring down at them.

Benji’s eyes are wide and glistening.

Jett is scowling like he wants to fight and marry me in the same breath.

Rhys has his jaw clenched so tight I swear I hear a tooth crack.

And my heart is doing backflips in glitter heels.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“To who?” Jett snarls.