Dark Light

Chapter 11

FONTANA SAT ALONE IN THE DARKENED BEDROOM, A glass of brandy in one hand, and contemplated his wedding night. Sierra was asleep two doors down the hall. This was the first time since he had bought the mansion that anyone other than himself had slept here.

It felt good to know that she was in his house. He would have preferred that she slept in this room; nevertheless, she was under his roof, and that was enough for now.

The stunt with dark light at the party had been a dumb-ass move. Why the hell had he done it?

Because he had been unable to resist the hunters' traditional wedding night challenge, that's why. Damn it, for a while there tonight he'd actually let himself believe that he really was a newly married man.

Growing up a bastard, his mother dead in a car accident when he was fifteen, he'd had very little in the way of traditions. When he joined the Guild, it was as if he had finally found a family. He had embraced the organization and everything about it, including all the old traditions, with the fervor of a new convert.

Tonight Sierra had become his wife—a Guild wife—and he had been overcome with a fierce desire to prove himself to her in the traditional Guild way.

He should have known better than to expect an outsider to be impressed with such an archaic tradition, especially a woman like Sierra, who had been born into an upper-class family.

The social status of the Guilds had always been an uneasy one, at least as far as mainstream society was concerned. Sure, high-ranking Guild members and their wives got invited to celebrity parties and elegant charity fund-raisers. A lot of people found raw power of any kind fascinating. They enjoyed rubbing shoulders with members of their local Guild Councils in certain social circles. Politicians and CEOs courted the top people in any Guild because the organizations possessed the kind of cash that could bankroll a campaign or invest in a hedge fund.

But if you were a part of the elite of mainstream society, you didn't want your daughter to marry a Guild man, not even if the marriage was a short-term MC with no lasting status. A Covenant Marriage between a high-ranking member of a Guild and a woman with Sierra's social background was so rare as to be the stuff of legend. Such marriages did occur from time to time, but they were usually the result of financial considerations. A once-wealthy mainstream family seeking to recoup its fortunes might contemplate such an alliance, but only as a last resort.

He wondered what Sierra's classy parents would say when they discovered that she was in a Marriage of Convenience with a Guild boss who was also a bastard. One thing was certain: they would not be happy about the situation.

He drank some of the brandy and wondered how long his marriage would last.