Chapter 12

 

The water had become off limits to Thane and his group, at least for a while. Evelyn and her gang had spilled enough blood and had left behind enough witnesses to have every shark hunter on the planet searching the waters around Queensland. She’d done what she’d set out to do. She’d scared the tourists and caused Thane so much damn misery he could hardly think of anything else.

Part of that misery came from the fact that he had to send Penny away. She wouldn’t be safe with Evelyn around and now that there was a great white on the loose, he wanted her nowhere near the ocean. At night, while most of the hunters had retired for the evening, he and one of the other guys would carefully patrol the water searching for any hint that Evelyn was still around. He thought the great white might have been a random attack, urged on by the amount of blood splattered in the water and then brought to Penny on the red ribbon seeping from both hers and Evelyn’s wounds.

Evelyn hadn’t reared her ugly head since the attack. With Axel dead, Thane decided she might have actually taken his advice and had migrated someplace where she wouldn’t find so much opposition. She could attack humans off the coast of Hawaii or the Bahamas or any other place she wanted as long as she stayed the hell away from Australia.

The great white didn’t return, so after a few weeks, Penny did.

On the day of their wedding, Thane couldn’t contain the joy inside. He was giddy, and everyone made fun of him because of it. He and Penny hadn’t had sex since her return. They both thought it would be interesting to see if they could make it to their wedding night. Tonight, he would fuck the shit out of the woman he’d missed so damn much.

As he stood on the beach waiting for her, he felt a twinge of sadness that Poet wasn’t there. All his other friends were dressed in their island bests. Kino had on khaki shorts and a red flowered Hawaiian shirt. Jagger wore a black leather vest with white slacks. Oliver wore a white suit. Rickshaw was dressed up too and wore suspenders and a bowtie. The women all wore comfortable dresses. Then Penny stepped out of his cabin, their cabin, wearing a white, sleeveless dress that dipped down to show her cleavage and was cut short at the thighs. He couldn’t explain it any better if he tried, but it was fucking sexy and she was so damn beautiful. This was the wife he’d waited for all his life and now she was finally his.

***

Her heart raced as she stepped out of the cabin. Everyone on the beach was family to her now. She was like them. The energy flowing up and down her limbs was so strong she felt like sprinting to him and tackling him into the ocean. He’d been right. She’d gone home for the past three weeks, and during that time, she saw her doctors. She thought they were all going to faint when her tests came back negative for leukemia. They poked her and prodded her and did all they could to figure out how it had happened, but in the end, they could only take her explanation, that it was a miracle.

They wanted to run more tests on her, but she left town before they got the chance. She knew before getting tested that her leukemia was gone. Before shifting that first time, she spent every day feeling exhausted and achy. She couldn’t wake up without pain in her joints and muscles and she couldn’t sleep through the night for the same reasons. The day of Poet’s death, when she changed back into her human form, she instantly felt the difference.

She was exhausted and sore from going through her first two shifts in such a short amount of time, but she felt alive, awake, anxious to get started with her day. Before, she’d been content with lying in bed and watching TV or reading a book. Now, she wanted to get out of the house. When she’d gone home, she went rollerblading in the park and jogged through her neighborhood. Being active gave her so much more energy.

Now, she was back on his island, her island, and she couldn’t wait to get started on her new life. She walked down to the beach with a brand-new pep in her step. She was alive, and she was happy. Thane was absolutely beaming with happiness and that made her heart hiccup. It seemed to beat at a rapid pace. Nerves hit her, but in a good way. She was definitely not backing out of this.

She took her time getting to him, dragging the moment out for as long as she could, since getting married wasn’t something she planned to ever do again. Juan Diego was the one leading the ceremony. How he’d gotten licensed to do so was a mystery to her, but he was there, and he was dressed in a suit and tie. He smiled even harder than Thane.

She’d just found her way into Thane’s arms when the sputtering of a boat engine sounded off in the distance.

“Who’s this?” Kino asked.

“Did you invite any guests?” Ruby asked.

“None,” Thane said.

He wrapped his arms around Penny as they waited to see who was approaching. The boat pulled up onto the beach, and none other than the QBFP officer Keelan Kane hopped out of the boat. This time he didn’t have a gun in his hand, nor did he have one on his hip.

“I come in peace,” he said, holding his hands up in the air to show they were empty.

“You’re interrupting something important,” Thane said.

“Are you…you’re not…are you getting hitched?” Keelan asked.

“Attempting to,” Penny called out.

“Well hell, I’m sorry,” he said. “Talk about bad timing. I only came out to say thank you.”

“Thank you?” Thane asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “For helping me out with that party barge mess. Look, I know your secret. I know about you all. That two-timing tramp, Evelyn, told me all about it. I had no idea she was one of you too. Seems she tried to pit us against each other. So…thanks for your help. We lost a lot of kids that day, but we saved a lot too, and we wouldn’t have saved any of them if you hadn’t jumped in the water.”

Penny watched the interaction between Keelan and her soon to be husband, and she didn’t like it. Keelan was never this nice. Was it possible that he truly felt that he’d been wrong?

“So that’s all,” Keelan said. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for interrupting the wedding.”

“No problem, Officer Kane,” Thane said, addressing the man by his title for the first time.

It seemed the two had cleared up the bad blood between them. Penny watched as Keelan walked back out into the water and toward his boat. He turned once more to wave, and Penny focused on his facial scar. Something about it bothered her. She couldn’t quite figure out why, but it did.

Once the officer sped away from the island, they carried on with their wedding. Penny smiled so hard her mouth hurt as Juan Diego said all the right words to join them in holy matrimony.

“I do,” Thane said.

Penny’s eyes welled up with tears and the world around her fell into perfect harmony as her disease-free body breathed a breath of new life. She was about to be a married woman, wed to the most stunning man she’d ever laid eyes on.

“I do,” she answered.

When they kissed, she felt a spark between them that ignited a feeling of loyalty, trust, and undying love inside her. She would kiss him this way forever. To the sound of their friends’ applause, she and Thane finally separated.

“Are you ready?” Thane asked.

“For what?” she said. “For you to whisk me off to your bed? Hell yeah.”

“Not yet,” he said. “We hit the water together, shark and shark, when we wed.”

Her heart fluttered as she realized this was the moment she had to tell him. It couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Are you afraid?”

“Something like that,” she said. “But no, I mean I can’t physically touch the water.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Kalina said, instantly catching on and running to her side. “You’re not…”

“I’m pregnant,” Penny said.

Thane’s mouth fell open. Then it turned upward in the biggest grin she’d ever seen.

“You’re pregnant?” he asked.

“Definitely,” she said.

He threw his arms around her, picked her up in the air, and spun her around before finally cradling her in his arms and walking toward the cabin with her.

“I’m the happiest man in the world right now,” he said. “And you’re about to be the happiest woman.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked. “How is that?”

He looked into her face, winked, and then pressed down on that bite mark on her shoulder.

“Holy shit,” she cried into his shoulder.

He was right, she was about to be the happiest woman in the world. She had Geraldine Wilder and her Paranormal Dating Agency to thank for that.

The end…for now.