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Pete frowns and shakes his head. “No, I mean yes, but why aren’t you guys excited?”

“Erm, you got engaged a while ago. We know you’re getting married. It’s not new information,” I say, with a slight frown and truly worried about his mental health. He’s been under a lot of stress recently.

His frown deepens for a moment, and then realization crashes over his face. He turns to look at Eli and smacks him on the chest. “Why didn't you jump in and make me make sense?”

Elijah bursts out laughing, “I couldn’t help it, their expressions are so confused and concerned.”

“Erm, guys?” I ask, while the others just watch the two of them with raised eyebrows.

“Sorry, sorry,” Pete says, turning back to me. “I meant we’re getting married before Elijah goes again.”

“That’s in less than two weeks,” I reply, my eyes hitting my hairline.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ever

Pete nods, “I know. That’s why I came running in here like I did. Do you know how much we have to plan?”

He sounds slightly hysterical, so I grab his hands in mine and make him breathe slowly.

“I do, but we’ve got this. Deep breaths, Pete,” I tell him, doing the deep breathing with him.

“Congratulations, guys,” Trick says as they all hug Elijah and welcome him back since we haven’t actually seen him for ages.

“Thanks,” Elijah says with a smile. He glances over at Pete, who is still holding onto my hands tightly and says, “We didn’t want to wait any longer to get married, not when we didn’t know how long I’m going to be gone for.”

“I’m sorry, guys,” Atlas says.

“Thanks,” Eli replies, emotion shining in his eyes.

“We just sat down to eat, there’s plenty of food,” Rafe starts. “Do you want to join us?”

Eli grins, “Yes, please. I think Pete’s about to steal Ever so that they can make plans. Apparently, going down to the courthouse and doing it that way is not acceptable.”

Both Pete and I gasp at the same time, and Pete points at me, looking vindicated.

“See, Ever gets it!” He exclaims.

I nod, “I do. It’s going to be tight, timing wise, and it probably won’t be anything like the original wedding that you had planned. We’re going to have to change a few things since it’s being done on such short notice, and some of the guests won’t be able to come, but we can absolutely do it and make it beautiful. You guys deserve that, you’re only going to get married once.”

Eli’s expression softens. “That’s true. Thank you, Ever.”

As we walk back to the dining room and everyone takes their seats, Pete says, “I really don’t have time to eat right now. I need to call our parents, and we need to figure out where to have it and . . .”

Eli pulls him close and kisses him, effectively shutting him up. When he pulls back, he smiles and says, “We are not having the wedding tomorrow, we have some time, and you need to eat, Love. If you don’t eat now, you’re going to be too tired to eat later.”

Pete melts, “Okay, fine. You’re only getting away with telling me what to do because you’ve been gone for so long and I missed you.”

“I know. You’ll be arguing with me again in no time at all,” Eli replies with a knowing smile.

We all take our seats again, and once everyone’s plates are loaded up, for the guys with their second helpings, I ask, “So what date do you have picked out?”

“Well, we’ve got the Hunt thing that needs to be done and dealt with first, and I would like the wedding to be as close to what we originally wanted as we can possibly get, which means I need as much time to plan it as I possibly can, so I was thinking two days after the Hunt thing,” Pete replies with a slight wince.

“Okay. So we’re heading up to the safe house in a week or so, right?” I ask, trying to get the logistics sorted.

Trick nods. “Yeah. Alaric doesn’t want us to hang around up there for too long, so we’ll be going up the night before and then getting into position in the early hours and waiting it out. Atlas is going to be the one that’s taking the shot since he is by far the best shot that we have.” Trick looks at Atlas, “Are you okay with that?”