Wolf's Pack (Wolves Next Door #3) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,146

hating getting the previous one caught in her hair, so she would need a lower setting. Then it sounded like my mate would never take her ring off if she could help it. She'd wear it in the shower, on her days off, and even in bed - with us. I wanted it to be so comfortable that she didn't have to think about it. That she could simply accept this the same way she'd accepted all of us.

Then Seth knelt down beside me. "What about that one?" he asked.

"No, that one," I said, crouching beside him. "A yellow stone in the middle of the engagement ring, and the conforming band can have a single diamond for Ian and four of those blue topazes for us."

"Alternating," Ian countered. "Topaz, diamond, topaz, and so on. There are five of the little diamonds in it now, right?"

"Yeah," I told him. "And it's not too much - the band looks delicate enough for her hands, but thick enough that she wouldn't snag it."

The other guys moved to look, all of us crowding over each other, and the salesgirl lifted it out. "You guys are cute, you know that? I should warn you, though. This is one of our more expensive options..."

"Don't care," Ian said.

So she placed it on the glass between us. "It's a beautiful ring, but be aware that it will take a week to ten days to reset the stones with the colors you want."

"That's fine," Ian promised, lifting it up. "Pax? Can I borrow your hand?"

"Not marrying you," Pax joked, but he offered his hand.

Ian just pushed the ring onto the first knuckle of Pax's index finger. "Your skin tone's the closest to hers. What do you guys think?" And he looked right at me.

"We need one of the diamonds that's actually yellow. Not the faded, but the bright color."

Ian nodded. "Like her amber eyes."

"This color for the blue ones," Trent said, pointing at another ring. "More turquoise than blue. It would look better with her skin, right?"

Pax just looked over at the girl. "Can we engrave the inside?"

She nodded. "Yep. That's common with our wedding bands. With that ring, there's not a lot of room, though. It would need to be a short phrase."

"Just want two alpha symbols and four beta. The alphas in the center."

"Nice," Trent said.

The poor salesgirl was looking between us as if lost. "Personal meaning, right?

"It is," I assured her, then turned to the guys. "What do you think? Is this the one?"

The problem was that they all just looked back at me. "I like it," Ian said.

"My taste sucks," Seth pointed out.

Trent and Pax were both nodding. "If you're happy with it, Lane, then we are. Is this the one she needs?"

I looked at the ring still on Pax's finger. It felt right to me. I could almost envision it on her hand. With the colored stones, it would be just enough to draw the eye - not too much, though - and it had meaning. Those five little diamonds were what had caught my attention. Five of us. The stone in the middle was one of her, elegant, perfect, and beautiful.

"I think that's it," I finally said. "Guess we didn't need all day to make this happen, huh?"

"When it's right, it's right," Ian said as he turned to the salesgirl. "Now, what do we need to do to make all those changes? And I want the yellow diamond in the middle to be just the right color."

"We have a chart for that," she assured him, holding out her hand for the ring. "Now, if the group of you will head down here with me, we can customize this to be everything your fiancé needs. If you'd like, I can get you the forms to fill out for financing while we're at it."

"No, we're good," Ian promised. "This is the only wedding ring we're ever going to buy, so we got this."

"Lucky lady," the girl joked.

But all I could think was that we were the ones who were lucky. Now, we just had to convince her to say yes. She loved us, and we all loved her. Somehow, we had to make it clear that for us, that meant forever, and this was going to be the perfect ring to do so.

CHAPTER 45

* * *

The guys surprised me on Tuesday with lunch. Not just one or two of them like usual. This time, it was the entire group. Ian ordered pizza, and we all