Roan couldn’t help but laugh, and it felt so good. Not just to laugh, but to laugh with his mate. To laugh with the woman he would spend the rest of his life with. He paused the car and looked at her. She was beautiful in a breathtaking way that made him want to stare at her. He never wanted to be separated from her. He hadn’t realized just how lonely his life had been until Maddie. And now that he knew the fullness that she brought, he would fight anything and everything to keep her–even a poisonous lizard with attachment issues.
“What?” she asked after he’d been watching her for what was likely an uncomfortable amount of time for her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.
Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said simply as the phone fell into her lap. “Well, thank you.”
Roan started driving again. “Was that all it took to keep you from calling in the lizard assassin?”
“I’ve got him on speed dial, don’t push your luck.”
“Oh, sweet Madeline,” he purred. “I plan to push it quite often with you.”
Epilogue
“Ithought coming to the human realm would be the only time that my life would be rebuilt, reformed, and completely upended. I was wrong. Once a shaman, now a king. Once mateless and alone, now I have the most precious thing in the world—Akira. Everything has changed and isstillchanging. We have to be ready to change with it or be destroyed by it.”
~ Nico
The Strip was a river of light beneath the penthouse windows, neon pouring through the glass and painting the walls with restless color. Even this high above the city, the pulse of Las Vegas was a living thing—thumping and wild, refusing to be ignored. But in the gentle hush of the suite, the chaos outside was a distant echo. Here, in this fragile quiet, Nico could finally breathe.
He stood with his forehead pressed to the cool glass, his green hair catching every electric flicker, his reflection fractured by the city’s glow. The room behind him was all sharp lines and modern luxury, but it felt like a holding cell comparedto the world that had cracked wide open these past days. The kingdom,hiskingdom, was changed. The world—every world—was changed.
A soft rustle behind him drew his gaze away from the neon-drenched skyline. Akira moved through the suite like a secret—barefoot, black hair falling like silk down her back, a pale blue robe cinched loosely at her waist. She didn’t make a sound, but Nico could feel her presence: calm, steady, a gentle gravity that kept him from slipping off the edge.
She settled on the end of the couch, tucking her legs beneath her, and regarded him with deep, unflinching eyes. Akira had been quiet from the moment he’d met her, but her silence was never empty. It was the silence of someone who listened, who watched, who weighed and measured before offering her truth. She was the kind of calm that could weather any storm—or, he imagined if needed, become the storm itself.
Nico turned from the window, crossing the room with a restless energy that didn’t quite suit the king he was supposed to be. He dropped onto the couch beside her, the cushions sighing beneath his weight. For a moment, he just stared at his hands—scarred, inked, still shaking from too much adrenaline and too little sleep.
Akira reached out, her fingers gliding over the back of his hand, her touch cool and grounding. “You’re thinking too loud,” she murmured, her voice a low melody in the hush.
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Can you blame me? Visata rewrote the rules. Tallula’s gone. Wolfgang’s dead. The lines are all new, and I’m supposed to draw the map.”
She traced a small circle on his skin, thoughtful. “You’ve always lived in chaos, Nico. From what I can tell, it’s what’s made you strong. You’ve had Raphael, but he was a friend, always on the outside because that’s where friends live. Now, you have someone on the inside, because that’s wherematesbelong. You’re not alone anymore.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes unwavering. “You never have to be.”
He studied her—the delicate lines of her face, the quiet steel in her gaze. For so long, he’d worn his defiance like armor, daring the world—at times daring Visata himself—to try and break him. Yet hereshewas, soft and unbreakable in ways he had never understood before.
“You’re not afraid,” he said quietly, more statement than question.
Akira’s lips quirked, the barest hint of a smile. “Of you? Never. Of what’s coming? Maybe. But fear isn’t a weakness, Nico. It just means you care about what you could lose.”
He let that sink in, the truth of it pressing against all the old wounds he’d tried to bury. “They’re going to expect a lot from you,” he said, voice raw. “The kingdom—my people—they’ll look to their queen for strength.”
She squeezed his hand, her grip gentle but unyielding. “Then I’ll give it to them. To you. That’s what we do, right? We show up. We fight. We love, even when the world’s spinning out.”
The words were simple, but Nico heard the steel beneath them. Akira had never been the type to shout or stomp her will into the ground—she simply stood, and the earth stilled around her. She was the calm in his storm, the clarity in his chaos. Visata, in his infinite, maddening wisdom, had chosen her for a reason. Nico could see it now, clear as the city lights below.
“Where’d you come from, Akira?” He chuckled. “I don’t even know your last name.”
“Ito,” she said. “Akira Ito.”
“What does it mean?”
“Akira means bright, and Ito means thread.”
Nico couldn’t help but smile. “The bright thread that holds me to you.”
Akira took his hand. “A thread can be tied on both ends, Nico. You will hold me to you just as tightly.”
