River Marked by Patricia Briggs Read Free Book Online

Adam told me, and tugged me out the side door and up the back stairs. “We’re escaping.”
    We made it out to the parking lot without seeing anyone else. Adam’s truck, inexplicably attached to a huge goosenecked travel trailer that looked bigger than the mobile home I’d lived in until this winter, when the fairy queen burned it to the ground, awaited us, poised for a quick getaway.
    “What’s the hurry?” I asked, as Adam boosted me in through the driver’s side, got in behind me, and started the truck before he had the door closed.
    “Some of the fae have an odd idea of bride send-offs,” he explained, as I wiggled over to the passenger seat and he guided the truck out of the parking lot, “including, according to Zee, kidnapping. We decided not to chance Bran’s feelings should such a thing happen, and Zee promised to run interference for us until we were off.”
    “I forgot about that.” And I was appalled because I knew better. “Bran and Samuel are probably more of a danger than any of the fae,” I told him. “Someday, I’ll tell you about some of the more spectacular wedding antics Samuel’s told me about.” Some of them made kidnapping look mild.
    I belted in, helped him to put on his own seat belt, and glanced behind us again. “In case you didn’t notice, there’s something very big stuck to the back of your truck.”
    He smiled at me, his eyes as clear and happy as I’d ever seen them. “And that’s my surprise. I told you I’d plan the honeymoon.”
    I blinked at the trailer. “Bring your own motel room along?” It loomed over us, taller than the truck—which was plenty tall on its own—taller and wider, too, with sections along the sides that were obviously intended to pop out. “I’m pretty sure it’s bigger than my old trailer.”
    Adam glanced over his shoulder and huffed a laugh. “I think it might be. This is the first I’ve seen of it. Peter and Honey took the truck and hitched it up.”
    “Is it yours?”
    “No. I borrowed it.”
    “I hope we’re not going anywhere with little windy roads,” I said. “Or small parking lots.”
    “I thought we’d spend the night in this really neat truck stop I know of in Boardman, Oregon,” Adam said, guiding it onto Highway 395 southbound. “The smell of diesel and the hum of big engines to accompany our first night together as man and wife.” He laughed at my expression. “Just trust me.”
    We did stop in Boardman to change out of our wedding clothes. Inside, the trailer was even more amazing than outside.
    Adam unhooked the billion bitty buttons that ran from my hips to my neck. A billion bitty buttons from my elbows to my wrists still awaited. They required two hands to unbutton, so all I could do was look around the trailer with awe. “It’s like a giant bag of holding. Huge on the outside, but even bigger on the inside.”
    “Your dress?” he said, sounding intrigued.
    I snorted. “Very funny. The trailer. You know about bags of holding, right? The nifty magic items that can hold more things than would ever really fit in bags of their size?”
    “Really?”
    I sighed. “The make-believe magic item from Dungeons and Dragons.” I craned my neck around, and said, “Don’t tell me you haven’t played D and D. Is there some rule that werewolves can’t indulge?”
    He leaned his forehead against my shoulder and laughed. “I may have been born in the Dark Ages”—actually he’d been born in the fifties, though he looked like he was only in his midtwenties; being a werewolf halts and reverses the aging process—“but I have played D and D. I can tell you for certain that Darryl has never indulged, though. Paintball is his game.”
    I took a minute to picture Darryl playing paintball. “Scary,” I muttered.
    “You have no idea.”
    Adam rubbed his cheek against mine and went back to his task. “I could just pull this apart, instead of unbuttoning it,” he said ten minutes later. It was a serious offer,