My Sister Stole My Mate, And I Let Her

Chapter 533: Chapter 533 A NEW CHALLENGE (BONUS Chapter 3)

ETHAN’S POV

I’ve faced many scary things in my life.

Rogue attacks. The last moments of my father’s life. Sending my sister off to battle, wondering if I would lose her when I’d only just earned the right to call her my sister again.

None of it compared to waiting at the end of this aisle.

My pack filled the seats on either side of the aisle—warriors I’d trained and fought beside, elders who’d watched me grow into the role long before I felt ready for it, pups swinging their legs from chairs far too tall for them, their eyes bright with excitement as they craned their necks for a better view.

Interspersed among them were familiar faces from OTS, colleagues and friends who had become Maya’s family over the years and had come to celebrate with us—except Lucian, who nobody had heard from since he left Nightfang.

In the front row, my mother sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap, dressed in lavender, with color in her cheeks and light in her eyes.

Since she woke up almost two months ago, she’d regained about seventy percent of her energy. She would never be the same, but as I watched her laugh quietly at something the pack elder beside her said, seventy percent felt nothing short of miraculous.

Only one person was missing, but I tried not to let the worry and hurt from not having seen or heard from my littlest sister in two months put a damper on the best day of my life.

Kieran stood behind me with his arms crossed, doing a terrible job of hiding how much he was enjoying my nerves.

“Unclench, Lockwood,” he drawled, “you’ll crack a tooth.”

I forced my jaw to unclench and immediately felt it tighten right back up as the wedding march began to play.

I turned, and the rest of the world vanished.

Maya stood at the top of the stone steps in white silk that draped around her in effortless elegance, and made it impossible to look anywhere else.

I’d seen her in a thousand different lights—mysterious and gorgeous across the showroom, soft and sleep-mussed on lazy mornings, sharp-edged and lethal when someone underestimated her—but no time had ever taken my breath away as powerfully as this one.

She walked toward me as if there were nowhere else in the world she’d rather be, her eyes never leaving mine, and I found myself counting every step simply because each one brought her closer.

When her father finally placed her hand in mine, it felt less like he was giving her away and more like he was entrusting me with the greatest privilege of my life.

I had to clear my throat twice before I trusted my voice not to crack in front of everyone we loved.

”Hi,” I said, quiet enough that it belonged only to us.

Her smile was dazzling.

”Hi yourself.”

The ceremony moved the way werewolf weddings do—customary recitations about the Moon Goddess and fate and bonds older than either of us—but I only half heard any of it.

I was too busy memorizing the exact way sunlight sat in Maya’s hair, the slight trembling of her lips as she fought not to cry, and the steady warmth of her hand in mine.

When it came time for vows, I went first.

”I could stand here and tell you I love you because fate wills it, but the Moon Goddess merely introduced us, and if I’d fallen in love with you in a single heartbeat, I would’ve missed the privilege of discovering you piece by piece.

”You’ve spent our entire relationship daring me to keep up with you, and I’ve spent it daring you right back, and somehow that’s what love turned out to look like for us. Not soft, not easy—a constant, new challenge that I have never want to back down from.

“I plan on choosing that fight every single day for the rest of my life, bond or no bond, Goddess or no Goddess. You’re more than my fate, Maya; you’re my favorite opponent, and my favorite decision, and I can’t wait to embark on this new challenge with you.”

Her eyes went bright and wet, and when she spoke, her voice was thick. ”Well, that’s going to be very hard to follow.”

Warm laughter rippled through the crowd, and I heard a few suspicious sniffles.

”I spent a long time believing love was something fragile,” she said quietly, looking down at our joined hands.

”Something that broke eventually, no matter how careful you were with it. I built a lot of walls because of that belief, and you never once asked me to tear them down. You just kept showing up on the other side of them, every single day, until I stopped needing them at all.”

She took a breath, and her hand tightened around mine.

”I used to think forever was a promise people couldn’t keep. I don’t think that anymore. I think it’s a choice, made over and over, the way you’ve been choosing me since the day we met.” Her voice cracked, and I instinctively reached out, catching the delicate tear that slid down her cheek.

“I choose you right back—wholly, completely, without any reservation or doubt. You are my forever, Ethan, and the rest of my life has never looked so beautiful.”

I lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

”I do,” I said before the officiant had even asked the question.

Maya laughed as the officiant rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Traditionally, you’re supposed to wait for me to ask.”

By the time he finally asked properly, and Maya said the two words I’d been half-terrified to hear all day, the whole world felt very quiet and very sure, the way it only ever did around her.

***

It was well past midnight by the time we made it back to our room, the sound of the reception still drifting faintly through the trees below.

Maya sat at the edge of the bed, veil long gone, hairpins scattered across the vanity where she’d pulled them out one by one on the walk up, and she was quiet in a way that caught my attention immediately. Not sad-quiet. Thinking-quiet.

I toed off my shoes and sat down beside her. ”You’ve got something on your mind.”

She glanced at me sideways. ”How do you always know that?”

”You get a crease right here.” I traced a light finger over the spot between her brows. “Don’t tell me you’re already regretting marrying me.”

She let out a small laugh, but it faded quickly, and she reached for my hand, lacing our fingers together like she needed something to hold onto.

”This morning, before the ceremony,” she said slowly, ”my mother and I had an...interesting conversation.”

She told me then—about coming home early, about Sasha and Dimitri, and a mortifying amount of context I made her repeat twice because I genuinely could not process it the first time.

By the end, I didn’t know whether to laugh or pull her into my arms, so I did both.

”So I can officially never look your parents in the eye again,” I chuckled against her hair.

She groaned. ”Please never bring it up again.”

”Absolutely not, I’m bringing it up for the rest of our lives.”

She smacked my chest as she pulled back, a soft smile on her face.

”I spent so long being afraid that this”—she gestured between us—”was temporary. That loving you this much was just giving fate a bigger target. I didn’t want to bring that fear into today, but I also didn’t want to marry you with it still hiding somewhere I hadn’t told you about.”

I turned her hand over in mine and pressed a kiss to her palm. ”You don’t have to carry any of it alone anymore. Not the old stuff, and not whatever comes next.”

“What comes next,” she whispered, nervousness flickering in her expression.

Her free hand drifted to rest against her stomach—still flat, still weeks away from showing, the unconscious gesture having become as familiar to me as her smile.

I placed my hand over hers. “We’ll make mistakes; we won’t always know what we’re doing—me especially.”

She let out a soft laugh as her forehead rested on my shoulder.

“But our baby will grow up never once questioning what love is, because they’ll feel it, they’ll see it.”

I held her closer, my hand tightening over hers as if I could somehow reach the tiny heartbeat hidden beneath it.

Our children would never know the fear that had held Maya back or the mistakes that had shaped me into the man I was now.

They would know laughter echoing through hallways, and a home where love was never something they had to question.

With my wife nestled safely against my side and our future quietly growing beneath my hand, I realized the happiest ending wasn’t really an ending at all.

It was simply the moment two people found home in each other and stepped into the rest of their lives together.