Forever After

  Forever After

  ForeverAfter

  Pink Petal Books

  Pink Petal Books, an imprint of Jupiter Gardens Press, publishes romance novels where the relationship is primary. It doesn’t matter if you want to read super erotic or sweet inspirational books. Pink Petal Books believes that love is a beautiful thing, no matter what form it takes . For more information about Pink Petal Books visit http://www.pinkpetalbooks.com/.

  Additional Titles by the Author

  Beginner's Luck

  Beginning Again

  Eternal Love

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Permission is granted to make ONE backup copy for archival purposes.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  FOREVER AFTER

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Copyright © KARENNA COLCROFT

  Cover Art © 2010 by StonyHill Productions

  Edited by MARY K. WILSON

  Electronic Publication Date: JUNE 2010

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Jupiter Gardens Press, Jupiter Gardens , LLC., PO Box 191 , Grimes, IA 50111

  For more information to learn to more about this, or any other author’s work, please visit http://www.pinkpetalbooks.com/

  This June, Pink Petal Books brings you the weddings that happened after the stories ended. We're offering free stories for your enjoyment.

  Available now at Pink Petal Books

  http://www.pinkpetalbooks.com

  And once you've read the weddings, don't forget to read the romances that led up to them!

  Ever After

  Karenna Colcroft

  PPB

  The plane touched down gently and Gwen breathed a sigh of relief. God, she hated flying.

  Unfortunately, not too many options existed for traveling from Maine to Wales . A boat trip would have taken far too long, and given how queasy she became sometimes, seasickness would have been a definite issue. Flying on the private jet belonging to the immortal Guard, which Rhys’s friend Max had arranged for them to use, had been faster, at least.

  Rhys rested his hand on hers, and she opened her eyes to smile at him. “We made it.”

  “Did you have any doubt?” He put his free hand on her rounded belly. “I would never take a chance with you and the wee one.”

  Her heart warmed at Rhys’s phrase for the child she carried. His child, even though he’d believed his immortality had made him sterile. Now immortal herself, she would be unable to conceive another child. Some quirk of biology had made it so that immortals were able to conceive only with mortals.

  The first time she and Rhys had made love, she’d still been mortal.

  “Mr. Trevellian, Ms. Davies, we’ve arrived,” the pilot’s voice unnecessarily informed them over the intercom. “Disembark when ready.”

  “Thank you,” Rhys called toward the cockpit. He unfastened his seat belt and stood. “Are you ready, love?”

  “I guess.” She stood and stretched. Her back, already achy from trying to adjust to the added weight in her belly, protested having been in one position so long. Thanks to turbulence over the Atlantic , she and Rhys had been forced to spend much of the five-hour flight buckled into their seats.

  She glanced out the window and grinned. Rhys’s sister Catrin stood near the runway, holding up a bright blue and pink banner. Although others in their family had had children, Rhys and Catrin were both over nine hundred years old, and their family had long since passed away. Catrin was thrilled with the prospect of having a niece or nephew to play with. Sometimes she sounded even more excited than Gwen and Rhys about the baby.

  Rhys leaned over. “I might have known,” he said, amused.

  “She’s going to want to know what the baby is.” Gwen grinned. “Wonder how annoyed she’ll be when we tell her we haven’t tried to find out.”

  “She won’t mind.” Rhys straightened again and took her hand. “Let’s go out and meet her before she decides to hunt us down.”

  He supported her down the stairs from the plane. Although she didn’t need the help, she was grateful for it. Six months into her pregnancy, she still struggled sometimes with the nausea, dizziness, and exhaustion that had begun almost as soon as the child had been conceived and she wouldn’t have wanted to lose her balance on the stairs.

  Before she had both feet on the ground, Catrin enveloped her in a hug. “You’re glowing!” she gushed. “Gwen, you look beautiful.” She released Gwen and hugged her brother. “Good to see you.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t let centuries go by again,” Rhys replied.

  “And now you’re here to be married.” Catrin beamed. “I wish you’d given more notice, though. I would have set up the inn, decorated, maybe arranged a special meal or something for you. I feel like you’re just doing this to get it out of the way.”

  “We are,” Gwen pointed out. “We want to be legal before the baby comes.”

  “I know. You should still have more of a ceremony,” Catrin grumbled. “No matter, though. I have a room ready for you at the inn, and Tomas will make sure your luggage is brought there. Walk with me.”

  “I think riding would be better.” Rhys put his arm around Gwen. “Anfarwol isn’t a large town, but here to the inn is a bit more walking than Gwen should do at this point.”

  She rolled her eyes, though secretly she enjoyed Rhys’s protectiveness. For too much of her life, she’d had no one else taking care of her, and she didn’t mind in the least when Rhys cared for her. “The doctor told me to walk,” she protested.

  “It’s nearly two miles from here to the inn,” Rhys countered. “I don’t think he intends you to walk that far. Catrin, can you call someone to drive us, please?”

  “I thought you might prefer that,” Catrin admitted. “Walking would have been nice. It’s a pleasant day, and Gwen, the sea looks gorgeous. However, Atarian’s waiting for us in his car beyond the hangar.”

  “Perfect,” Rhys said, satisfied.

  On the far side of the hangar, a roofless car which would have been more at home a hundred years earlier waited. The man behind the wheel waved and grinned at them. “That’s his new toy,” Catrin said, shaking her head. “He bought it from an online auction. I can’t even figure out how those things work.”

  “Boys will be boys,” Gwen murmured, squeezing Rhys’s hand.

  The car had a folding rumble seat, which Catrin clambered into while Atarian exited the vehicle and embraced Gwen. “It’s good to have you here for happy reasons.”

  “Yeah, much nicer than having to watch Rhys be judged.” She forced away the unpleasant memories of the last time she and Rhys had been in the village and smiled at Catrin’s man. “Maybe this should be a double wedding.”

  Catrin blushed prettily. “We’ve been together for hundreds of years,” she pointed out. “What would the sense be of formalizing it now? Under most laws, we’re considered husband and wife anyway.”

  “Especially under immortal law.” Atarian firmly shook Rhys’s hand. “It surprised me when Catrin told me of your visit. I’d have thought Gwen’s doctor wouldn’t permit travel.”

  “He gave her guarded permission.” Rhys grinned at Gwen. “She said she’d go whether h
e allowed it or not, and he gave his okay as long as we took a comfortable flight and she rested as much as possible while we’re here. If we’d waited another month, though, nothing Gwen said would have swayed him.”

  “And I still would have come anyway,” Gwen said stubbornly.

  “I wouldn’t have let you, love.” He bent and kissed her belly. “I won’t let anything happen to our child or you, remember?”

  “I know.” She kissed the top of his head and nudged him to straighten up. “Let’s go.”

  Rhys made her take the front passenger seat, while he crammed his six-foot frame into the rumble seat with his sister. As they drove slowly into the village, Gwen watched the scenery flow by. The cottages and houses, the ocean on the other side. The small chapel which now housed the two most powerful immortals in the world, the Preceptor and Preceptress, who had ruled Atlantis at the time of its fall.

  This visit had occurred at the request of the Preceptress. She’d taken a special interest in Gwen, and had contacted them through Max to ask that they return to Anfarwol to formalize their commitment to one another.

  And legalize it. Before they’d left, Max had helped Rhys navigate the paperwork and requirements so that the ceremony performed by the Preceptress would be recognized as a legal marriage by the state of Maine , where Rhys and Gwen now made their home.

  After a few minutes, they stopped in front of the largest building in Anfarwol other than the airstrip hangar—the inn which Catrin ran for the few immortals who visited the village each year.

  Mortals were encouraged to drive a bit further, to the city of Machynlleth , for places to stay while visiting the area.

  Behind them, a nondescript blue sedan came to a stop, driven by Tomas, the jet’s co-pilot. He emerged and opened the trunk of the car. “You do realize transport of luggage is not my job?” he asked, setting two suitcases beside Atarian’s vehicle.

  Atarian exited his car, and Rhys jumped out of the rumble seat. “Stay put until we have things inside, Gwen,” he said. “Rest.”

  “We sat all the way here,” she grumbled. “I did rest.”

  As if to punctuate her complaint, a small foot jabbed her in the side. The baby apparently had a great future ahead as a soccer player, or perhaps a gymnast given how frequently he or she moved.

  Rhys ignored her and accompanied Tomas back to the other car for the two smaller bags they’d brought. Since the romance novels Rhys wrote brought in abundant income to support them, neither of them had to answer to a job, so they’d come to Wales without deciding for certain how long they would stay. Because of that, they’d had to bring plenty of clothing, especially since Rhys claimed the weather in Wales in late October tended to be unpredictable.

  The men carried the luggage into the inn. Catrin pulled herself out of the rumble seat and helped Gwen out of the passenger seat, though she didn’t really need the assistance. “I hate sitting back there,” Catrin confided. “I don’t have to often, thank heaven. Atarian bought the car with the intent of showing me the countryside, maybe even crossing the border into England . Instead it seems to have become one of the Guard’s official vehicles.

  The Guard, who enforced the laws of the immortals, probably didn’t get much use out of the roadster. Gwen didn’t see how any of the men she’d met who served as Guard would even fit in the rumble seat. And it certainly wouldn’t be secure for transporting criminals.

  Catrin led her inside. Footsteps overhead indicated that the men had gone upstairs. “Come into the kitchen,” Catrin urged. “I want to talk to you without the guys around. They wouldn’t be interested.”

  “If this is about wedding food or bridal shower or anything like that, I don’t think I want to hear it,” Gwen replied. In all her phone calls with Catrin since the Preceptress had issued her summons, Catrin had babbled on and on about decorations, favors, and food for the wedding ceremony Gwen didn’t intend to have.

  She trailed the other woman down the hall to the kitchen, which lay at the rear of the building. On the table sat a booklet open to a page of wedding cakes. “Catrin, we aren’t even having a regular wedding!”

  “Rhys said you hadn’t decided yet.” Catrin sat and motioned for Gwen to do the same. The baby kicked again, and Gwen took a seat.

  “We don’t decide, the Preceptress does, I think.” She stared at the booklet without registering what was on the page. “It isn’t like the regular ‘I do, I do too’ sort of thing, Catrin. When the Preceptress said she wanted to do this, she told us it would be a ceremony they used to perform in Atlantis. It joins the couple’s souls and energies, or something like that, and the only people there are the couple and the person or people performing the joining. Not a big ceremony with lots of guests and fancy clothes and cakes.” She focused on the page in front of her. “Especially nothing that fancy.”

  Long before she’d met Rhys, when she’d still believed she and her boyfriend Cole would be married someday, she’d dreamed of cakes like these. That had been before Cole had beat her into the hospital.

  Now, she wanted only to spend the rest of her life with Rhys. Even though that life would last centuries or longer. She’d allowed Rhys to transmute her to immortality, and now only one of the Atlantean weapons, daggers created to sever an immortal’s soul from their body and disrupt the cellular regeneration which rendered them unable to die, could kill her.

  Fortunately, as far as she knew, the Preceptor and Preceptress had the only such weapons in existence.

  She studied the cakes. All looked far too extravagant and costly for what she and Rhys wanted. Legalizing their relationship was just a formality. They’d chosen to do it only because the Preceptress had asked. Even with the baby on the way, Gwen had been perfectly comfortable with the idea of just living with Rhys, and he’d been fine with whatever she had chosen. Under those circumstances, a huge celebration wouldn’t be warranted.

  “They’re beautiful,” Catrin said timidly. “I really like this one.” She tapped a picture of a three-tiered cake, the smallest tier resting on crystal pillars, with pink and red frosting roses scattered over it. Atop the cake sat a crystal figurine of two people intertwined. “It’s from a shop in Machynlleth. One of our people works there and said she’d be able to give us a good price on whatever cake you and Rhys choose.”

  “Rhys and I aren’t going to choose a cake,” Gwen argued. Good price or not, she refused to allow anyone to spend money on something so unnecessary. Despite Rhys’s six-figure income from his novels, she’d spent so much of her life living in poverty that she didn’t allow herself to spend money on anything she didn’t need.

  “Why aren’t we?” Rhys asked, entering the room with Atarian behind him. The front door of the inn slammed. “I think Tomas is a bit peeved at being demoted from co-pilot to baggage boy.”

  “Which wouldn’t have happened if Ianto had been where I assigned him,” Atarian grumbled. “He and Caradoc were supposed to meet you.”

  “Where are they?” Gwen had liked Caradoc when she’d met him before. A descendent of one of Rhys and Catrin’s other sisters, he had a mischievous sense of humor, and had been one of the few to accept Gwen’s transmutation unconditionally.

  “Caradoc had to be sent on a case.” Atarian opened one of the cupboards and took out a wine bottle. “Ianto said he had something to do, and that’s all he told me. Since I sent Caradoc out of the village, I understand his not being at the airfield. I don’t know that Ianto has an excuse, however.” From another cupboard, he took four wine glasses, which he set on the table. “A toast, to your impending joining and to the first child born to the immortals since Atlantis fell.”

  “I can’t have wine,” Gwen protested.

  “It isn’t wine.” Catrin turned the bottle so the label faced Gwen. “Sparkling grape juice. We planned ahead. We thought perhaps you and Rhys might toast each other with it after your wedding, as well.”

  “You’ll have to excuse her.” Atarian rummaged in a drawer until he pulled out a cor
kscrew. “Wedding’s are rare events here, and she’s become a bit overenthusiastic about yours.” He kissed Catrin’s forehead tenderly and sat beside her. “All of us are excited, to be honest. Just not quite as vocally as my Catrin.”

  Catrin’s face reddened again at his words. “I’m not overenthusiastic,” she said defensively. “I just want Rhys and Gwen to have the best.”

  Atarian opened the bottle and poured some juice into each glass. He raised his, and the others followed suit. “To Gwen, Rhys, and their child,” Atarian said.

  “To them,” Catrin agreed.

  Rhys merely smiled and sipped from his glass. “Catrin, I don’t think you understand why we’re here. The Preceptress asked if we would allow her to formalize things for us, and we agreed because—well, because she’s the Preceptress. My understanding is that it’s to be a small ceremony with the Preceptors, Gwen, and myself only.”