Gold(50)

“No,” Ron said. “You can’t get away with this.”

“It’s going to be a double wedding,” Cliff said ominously, getting on the podium and trying to drag her onto it.

“Ew!” Melanie screamed, batting him with her bouquet. “Get off. You’re ruining it.”

Cliff reached back to shove her to the side, and Ben caught her, pulling her out of the way and off the podium.

Like everyone else, he seemed to realize there was no reasoning with his clearly insane brother.

The minister had crept to the edge of the platform, and Cliff was now alone in the center, yelling like a crazy person and yanking on her arm.

She dug her feet into the wood in front of her and braced all her weight against him.

Dammit, maybe he would force her, but she wasn’t going to make this easy.

“You do this or I’m going to let my friends attack your family,” he hissed at her.

She jerked back extra hard, and he lost his grip, but then he just jumped off the platform to scoop her up in his arms, ignoring her flailing as his friends kept her father from reaching her.

This was all ridiculous.

I hate shifters. I hate them! she thought as she kicked hard, trying to escape Cliff’s hold. I’m going to hate them forever.

She was busy pounding on his chest when she became aware of a loud, high whistling sound, like something dropping from the sky.

She put a hand up, but whatever it was, it was coming down too quickly, right at them.

She flinched as Cliff jumped back from the podium, bracing himself as they heard a large crash and something landed hard in the middle of the platform, sending up a huge cloud of dust and wood and flowers and obliterating the beautiful arch.

As the dust slowly cleared, she saw a figure standing in the middle of the wreckage of the podium. He head was down, and he was stumbling to his feet.

But there was something odd about him, something moving behind him.

As he stood up straight and they unfurled around him, she realized he had… wings? Other than that, he was familiar. She couldn’t believe her eyes.

It was Dante, looking as handsome as ever with his mussed golden hair and some kind of suit on, though it was now torn from his crash landing.

Thick, scaling wings grew out of his back to make massive shapes on either side of him.

Was Dante some kind of human bat?

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his neck as he looked at her. “I hope you can take back what you said about shifters. Because I am one.”

She’d never been gladder to see a weird bat creature in her life. She struggled to get to him but realized belatedly she was still being restrained by Cliff.

Dante snarled and took a step toward them. “I suggest you set down my mate.”

“She’s my mate,” Cliff said. “And what the hell are you?”

“If you find out, it’ll be the last thing you see,” Dante said. “Now I’ll say it one more time. Put. Down. My. Mate.”

Cliff looked like he was considering his options.

Ron was standing with Grace, his arm protectively around her. The wedding guests were shifting nervously. Dante flapped his wings and stepped out of the wreckage of the podium, walking menacingly toward Cliff.

“Too late,” he said darkly, raising one hand, which had long talons where his nails had once been.

Cliff gasped, and Ella looked down to see thick streams of something wet-looking and metallic moving up his legs, almost like gold.

She looked at Dante in shock. The metal stuff wound up around Cliff’s torso as he yelled and began to struggle, but she could see it was slowly restraining him. As it wrapped around his arms, pulling them farther apart, she began to struggle to get free.

Just as Cliff was about to let go of her, Dante stepped forward to catch her in his arms.

He stepped back, holding her against him, supporting all her weight with one arm. How was that even possible?

Cliff was now caged in a delicate, webbed cage of gold, his eyes mad with rage, as his friends looked around helplessly.

“Try and shift now, bastard,” Dante said with an evil grin.

Cliff struggled, but couldn’t even move. His eyes darted around angrily to his friends. “Do something!”

They froze, all backing up as they stared at Dante. He looked in their direction, took a deep breath, and blew something over them that looked like a huge cloud of sparkling powder, billowing over them like flames.

When the cloud dissipated, she saw all of Cliff’s friends standing there frozen, coated in golden dust like particularly oddly posed statues.

“What the hell are you?” Cliff shouted maniacally.

All the guests were now silent, and Ella’s family had backed away as well. Her dad looked at her reassuringly, as if he also understood she was safe now that Dante was here.