“Please tell me it stopped raining,” I said.

I saw Susan’s reflection roll her eyes behind my back. I’d been basically strapped into this seat in the middle of the guest house’s luxury bathroom for damn near an hour while Randy, my hairdresser, struggled to turn my strictly utilitarian haircut into something sexy and romantic.

“Karen, for the hundredth time, it’s not raining,” Susan answered.

“But the weather forecast said seventy percent chance of showers after two—”

“Trust me. It’s absolutely gorgeous out there.”

“Relax,” Randy admonished me, through a mouthful of hairpins.

Sighing, I tried to relax my shoulders before I met Susan’s eyes in the mirror. “You’re sure?”

Susan flicked her hair back in annoyance. “Look, why don’t I go take a picture?”

She stomped out of the room, and Randy made a valiant attempt to turn his laugh into a cough. For the thousandth time, I tried to angle my head just right to catch one of the kitchen windows in the bathroom mirror. Impossible. It could be a freaking hurricane out there, and I’d never know.

“I’m not being a Bridezilla about this, right?” I asked Randy.

“Course not,” he said, this time with a tiny white rose clamped in his lips. He pinned the rose to something in the back of my head and smiled. “But you know what they say about Montana. If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”

I closed my eyes, trying to picture clear blue skies. Vali and I picked June because it’s my favorite time of year in Montana; the hills are green, the wildflowers are exploding, and the jagged mountains are still dazzling with snow. I hadn’t even considered the goddamn capricious weather. When we woke up to a gray drizzle this morning, I wanted to scream.

“Can’t we get Loki to fix the weather?” I asked, standing in front of the bedroom’s bay windows and watching the aspen grove where we were supposed to exchange vows in seven short hours. It was surrounded by a haze of mist.

Vali walked up behind me, kissing my neck. “He doesn’t do weather. And besides, I like it.”

“You like rain?” I asked. “On our wedding day?”

His hands dropped to cup the swell of my pregnant belly. “In Asgard, rain during a wedding is considered lucky.”

I turned to face him, catching his grin. “Is that true?”

“Maybe.” He pulled me into his arms. “Is it true I don’t get to see you again until the ceremony?”

“Maybe,” I answered.

“Then you’d better come back to bed now,” he said. “I promise, when I’m done with you, you’ll forget all about the rain.”

I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror and blushed. I’d been smiling like an idiot beneath the piled curls of Randy’s masterpiece as I remembered how many time Vali made me scream this morning. Thank God I’d insisted on getting my parents a separate cabin.

“And you’re free to stand,” Randy said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Just try not to touch it for the next couple of minutes, and it’ll stay fabulous all night.”

I stood, suppressed the immediate urge to touch my hair, and spun to the kitchen widow. A thin scrim of high, white cirrus clouds drifted through a bright blue sky. The aspen leaves flipped and danced in the breeze.

“Oh, thank God,” I sighed.

“She did tell you it wasn’t raining,” Randy said as he packed up his arsenal of supplies.

I opened my mouth to reply, and Susan squealed from behind me.

“Oh, you look fantastic!” she said. “Turn around, look!”

Randy and Susan spun me in front of the bathroom mirror so I could examine myself from every angle. My dark hair spilled from the rose-bedecked swirls on top of my head into an avalanche of tight ringlets that reached to my shoulders.

“Wow,” I said. “This looks even better than the first time I got married.”

Randy nodded appreciatively, and I told myself to send him an enormous tip first thing tomorrow. Or, maybe not first thing.

Susan giggled. “Your mom’s got the dress in the bedroom. You ready?”

I nodded, trying to ignore the flutter of nerves in my chest. We were already married, for God’s sake. Why the hell was I nervous?

My wedding dress was easy to put on, at least with two grown women helping me. I worried it wouldn’t fit perfectly; my last meeting with the seamstress was almost a month ago, and my pregnant belly had grown considerably since then. But the dress fit just right, tight across the stomach and chest with an eruption of white lace below my waist. I told myself to send an extra tip to the seamstress, too. Second thing tomorrow morning. Or third.

“Oh, you look so lovely!” My mom’s voice trembled. Her eyes were wide and shiny, almost as if she were—

“Mom, are you crying?” I couldn’t believe it. My stoic New Englander parents are not given to many displays of emotion.

Her cheeks reddened, and Mom dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I’m just happy for you, dear.”

I turned back to Susan, figuring I’d give my mom a minute to collect herself. “And the flowers?”

Susan gave me a thumbs-up. “All set. Your bouquet is down there, with your dad.”

“The music?” I asked, frantically trying to think of anything else I may have missed.

Susan wrapped her arms around my shoulders, somehow managing to give me a hug without touching my hair. “Shut up,” she whispered. “Everything is fine. Just enjoy yourself.”

My stomach fluttered again as I turned back to the mirror, checking my lipstick. Now that I was wearing it, the dress felt slightly ridiculous. Barry Richardson and I had gotten married at the courthouse. I hadn’t even worn white. I don’t think his parents ever forgave me for depriving them of an opportunity to throw a huge wedding gala.

This wedding had been Vali’s idea.

“Don’t you mortals have a custom of celebrating a marriage with a ceremony?” he’d said.

His eyes had danced as he asked that question, and I guessed he knew all about weddings. It had only been a week, or perhaps not even a week, since Loki had dropped me, without warning, into the middle of my own living room.

“Perhaps,” I said. “Why? Do you want a wedding?”

His smile widened. “Of course I want a wedding! Do you think we can pull it off before the little one shows up?”

He ran his hands over the tiny but growing lump in my belly as he spoke. Damn it all, I thought, Loki had been right. Vali hugged me so tight it almost hurt when I told him I was pregnant. When I asked if he would want to be the father to my child, he’d said he was hurt I felt like I even had to ask.

“You do look amazing,” Susan said, pulling me back to reality. “And so does the aspen grove. Everything is perfect, I swear. Ranger’s honor.”

Tears started to well in my own eyes, and I blinked them away. “Thank you.”

I hugged Susan, then my mom, then both of them at the same time. Someone coughed from the doorway, and Susan gave me a conspiratorial little smile.

“We’ll see you down there,” Susan said, taking my mom’s hand and leading her from the room.

I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “I’m ready,” I whispered, running my hands over the bulge of my stomach. “Let’s do this, baby girl.”

“You are the most beautiful woman in Midgard,” Vali said from the doorway.

“Vali!” I squealed. “You’re not supposed to see me before the wedding!”

He entered the room with a grin. “Couldn’t resist.”

Damn, he looked handsome! He wore a dark blue suit and a brilliant white tie, with a boutonniere of wildflowers pinned to his lapel. He had offered to pull his hair back, or even cut it off, but I balked. I wanted to say my vows to the man from my dreams, with his long, dark curls framing his face and spilling down his back.

Suddenly Susan’s sneaky little smile made sense. “Susan put you up for this, didn’t she?”

“I bribed her,” Vali said, leaning close to nibble my ear. “With promises of the true story of how we met.”

“Oh, you can’t!” My yelp of protest dissolved into a sigh of pleasure as Vali leaned down to kiss me. His lips tasted smoky and rich.

“Is that whiskey?” I asked.

“Just a sip,” he said. “Zeke told me it’s a human tradition.”

“I don’t remember actually inviting Zeke to this wedding,” I muttered.

“You didn’t. He’s here as my guest.”

I groaned. “Did you invite Colin too?”

“Of course!”

I should have guessed. Colin and Zeke had shown up on my doorstep last week, uninvited, with a beat-to-shit van packed full of other graduate students I barely recognized. Zeke told me they’d come for Wolf Boy, and that it would be an affront to our common humanity to let him marry without a proper bachelor party. I thought about telling them to get lost, but Vali shrugged and said he would love to learn more about modern human customs.

Ten hours later, I was on the verge of calling the police - or Loki -  when the van backfired into my driveway at daybreak. Vali staggered out of the back, vomited on the front steps, and collapsed on the couch for the rest of the day, smelling like he personally drank half the whiskey in the great state of Montana. When he finally woke up, he told me only that he’d been sworn to secrecy about the entire night.

Since then Colin, Zeke, and Vali had been disturbingly close.

Vali kissed me again, before I could protest. “And how’s our girl?” he asked, dropping his hands to the curve of my stomach.

I smiled. “She’s fine.”

Vali was with me when I got my first ultrasound. I held his hand so tightly I left small, purple bruises on all his fingers, like little rings. I’d cried when the OB told me she looked perfectly healthy, and Vali held me on the hard plastic of the doctor’s examining table for a very long time.

Vali tilted his head, looking at my stomach. “Is she kicking?”

“Don’t worry. She was moving all morning.”

Vali dropped to his knees, resting his head against the white satin of my dress. “Hello, baby girl,” he whispered. “Daddy’s here.”

“Oh, there she goes!” Our daughter turned inside me, making a slow ripple of motion across my abdomen as she responded to Vali’s voice. “I don’t know how you do that. She won’t move for me.”

He grinned, his hands pressed to my womb. “You stay in there a little longer, sweet girl,” he whispered. “Mommy and Daddy have some plans for the next few nights.”

Vali stood and gave me an incendiary smile, leaving no doubts about the nature of those plans. We were going to spend our honeymoon in British Columbia, hiking at Lake Louise, although I doubted we’d end up doing much actual hiking. I didn’t remember feeling sexy at all during my first pregnancy, but Vali treated each new inch around my waist as an aphrodisiac, and his constant arousal only turned me on more.

“I thought pregnancy and marriage were supposed to be a turnoff,” I said.

“Nothing about you is a turnoff,” Vali whispered, leaning close to run his lips down the curve of my neck.

I closed my eyes. Unzipping my dress was starting to seem like a very good idea. The rest of the wedding party could wait—

“If you’re quite done.”

I jumped. Loki stood next to us, close enough to touch.

“Goddamn it, Loki!” I said. “You have got to stop doing that!”

Vali didn’t even move. “I’m not done,” he muttered, his face on my neck and his hands tight around the small of my back.

I sighed, allowing myself to relax in his arms for one last kiss. We made it last a long time.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Loki, once Vali and I pulled apart.

“The pathway to the aspen grove is a bit muddy. Vali thought you might like to be transported to the ceremony.”

I blinked at my husband. Just when I thought he couldn’t surprise me, he considers things like mud and dresses.

“That would be great,” I said, smiling at Vali. “Thank you.”

Vali kissed me one more time on the curve of my jaw, and I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of his body in my arms, breathing his wild scent. Our eyes met as he pulled away, saying all the things I could not find the words to express. He took my hand and raised it to his lips, kissing my fingers gently.

“See you there,” he whispered.

I watched him walk through the door, waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal. Some part of me wondered if there would ever come a time when our kisses didn’t leave me gasping for breath, or shot through with arousal. God, I hoped not.

Once I heard the front door close, I turned to Loki.

“May I ask you something?” I whispered.

“Of course.”

“Is everything—” I paused, wrapping my arm around the swell of my belly. “Is everything going to turn out all right?”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’ve absolutely no idea. But we’ve all managed so far.” He gave me that odd smile again, the one that made me think of him holding a newborn.

“Are you ready?”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes.”—

—And the two of us stood together in front of the aspen grove. The Gallatin River chattered behind us as aspen leaves shifted and rustled in the breeze. The soft notes of George Winston’s Montana album, drifting from the little speakers nestled in the aspen grove, mixed with the gentle chatter of subdued conversation. A baby shrieked, and I turned to see Caroline standing under a cottonwood, bouncing Adelina in her arms. Caroline’s entire face changed when she saw Loki; it was like watching the sun rise over the mountains of Asgard. My chest clenched as I realized how close I’d come to never smiling like that again.

Loki shifted against me, but I grabbed his arm. His pale eyes met mine.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He nodded, then joined his wife and child under the cottonwood. Adelina screamed with laughter as I stepped closer to the aspen grove. There was John, sitting with his wife and three kids on the white folding chairs under the trees. Diana sat on the other side of the aisle, somehow managing to make a flannel shirt look elegant and regal. Zeke was in the back row, his legs spread wide. He grinned at me beneath a pair of absurdly enormous aviator glasses. Next to him, Colin raised one hand in a small salute. He at least had the decency to look somewhat sheepish about crashing his boss’s wedding. Sitting in the front row, my mom was still dabbing her eyes. Susan stood in front of the makeshift aisle of folding chairs, wearing what she’d insisted on calling her “bridesmaid jeans.”

And next to Susan, smiling in the dappled June sunshine, stood Vali, his wildflower boutonniere nodding in the gentle breeze. Husband, I thought, my breath catching in my throat. Home.

My dad walked and handed me the tightly wrapped bouquet of wildflowers Susan and I had picked that morning. Bright scarlet penstemon, purple lodgepole lupine, and the brilliant blue-and-white shooting stars of columbine. Just like in our dream meadow.

Dad smiled, and somewhere, someone started Wagner’s Bridal Chorus.

“Are you ready?” he whispered.

I nodded and took his arm. On the other side of the aspen grove, Vali’s golden eyes rose to meet mine.

“Yes,” I said.