I let go of him, but I rested one hand on his shoulder. “Melton, I mean it when I say I can’t stomach more death because of Charles, especially by my own hand. And that includes you. Even with all the work I’ve done, my soul is weary.Sofucking weary. What you’re asking of me is something I don’t want to bear.”
Surprisingly, that almost seemed to give the wrecked man some strength. “So… so me doing this will help you feel less pain?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
He nodded shakily and wiped his face. “That’s a start, then.”
“Yes,” I agreed, finally letting him go. “That’s a start.”
EPILOGUE
GISELLE
A lot could happen in two years.
In just twenty-four months, I’d met a wonderful man, helped him through a lot of trauma, faced a lot of my own issues, gotten into a relationship, made said relationship official, became mates,andhad finished my fifth year of teaching.
Oh, and I’d become a mentee of a fairy who was teaching me more things about the magical world to assist her with her wayfaring gig in a pinch.
All in all, nothing to sneeze at, but then I’d had to go ahead and ask Ben if he wanted to move in together.
I’d been half surprised when he agreed, but then he’d started talking about how his house was too small for all of us, and we could use a bit more privacy as Benny grew closer to shifting age. The last thing I’d expected was for him to go out and buy a modest acreage just outside of the city.
Thankfully, we would still be close enough that I could drive Benny to school each day and Ben could pick him up, so I had agreed—on the condition that we had accommodations for my own family. Especially since the home I had grown up in was becoming more and more expensive to maintain, what with property taxes increasing exponentially. Sure, I was about to hitthirty and I wanted to live on my own, but losing my income would be a pretty big devastation to my family.
The tricky part was asking them if they were willing to move out of the house where we’d built our lives.
It was bittersweet in a way. There was so much of my mother baked into that place. She was in the walls, in the paintings and pictures that we hung, in the plants that I still grew, and the tree that she’d begged my father not to cut. But those were all just things. Because where she truly was, was in our hearts.
Or at least that was the consensus my family came to, which was how I ended up with both of my siblings and my father standing on the patch of grass beside where our driveway connected with the main road, looking over the impressive expanse of land.
“So, this is really all yours, huh?” my father asked, sounding just about as shocked as I was. Because although I had been a part of the process, I guess I hadn’t really visualized exactly what the entire thing would look like once we were here.
Because it wasn’t just a large main house with room for Ben, his children, and me with space to grow, but there was an in-law suite in the back that really could be its own apartment that was just for my father. It was spacious—almost the size of our entire first floor—and he would only have to come into the main house if he wanted to visit. Otherwise, he would have complete privacy and space to host his own friends and events.
Then, about a five-minute walk away was another, smaller three-bedroom house for my brother and Nox. There was enough room for them to grow as well, and they were both welcome to stay however long they liked.
Of course, there was still one more person who was part of our informal little pack. Natalie. She had a matching three-bedroom in the opposite direction, about ten minutes away, witha solid tree-line to give her space, and then her own wide open pasture to run in.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked, turning to face her, but she was already sprinting forward into her shift, her horse form practically exploding out of her. I had learned about shifters enough to know that it had to hurt, but you couldn’t tell by the way she whinnied and kicked her feet as she sprinted off into the distance.
“Don’t know if I’m ever gonna get used to that,” Simon said calmly.
Oh yeah, one other thing.
We’d told my family about shifters.
That had happened about six months earlier, when I had first proposed Ben and me moving in together. Because I wanted to stay close-knit as a family, just like a wolf pack, it wouldn’t have been possible if we left them in the dark. Well, maybe it would have been possible, but it certainly would have been stressful as hell. The whole point of us all moving to the country was so everyone could be themselves. Seemed a bit counterintuitive to then have to hide what they were from half of the people who meant the world to me.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited,” Benny said from beside me, shaking his head. In the two years that had passed, he had already gone through one growth spurt, and I had no doubt that he was going to be a lot taller than me. Although I wasn’t directly in charge of his medical care, Ben would often brief me on what his doctor said, and it did seem that the intense trauma had triggered a shifter survival tactic that had him aging a bit more rapidly than a shifter child normally would. It wasn’t anything to be scared of, but it did mean he would get a beard earlier than most, and acne too. And, of course, his first shift.
I was looking forward to it, even though I was a little terrified, which felt like the right mixture for a stepparent to be.Because that was what I was now, undeniably. Despite all the odds, Ben and I had come together to make a true family. A pack.
“I wanna go inside!” Veronica said, taking off on a run down the lengthy driveway to the main house. Despite having the seemingly endless energy of a four-year-old, she’d tire herself out before she got there. Although Veronica absolutely was a wolf, it was pretty clear to all of us that she was built more for strength and protection and less for speed. While her brother could sprint for hours, we’d had to upgrade Veronica to metal glasses because she kept accidentally shattering all the plastic ones appropriate for children her age.
“Wait for the rest of us, kiddo!” Ben said, laughing at our daughter’s antics. Although he was a little indulgent with his youngest, he generally knew when to rein her in.
“Last one there is a rotten egg!” she called without slowing down, knowing that she had her daddy wrapped around her little finger. And you know what? I was fine with it. She wasn’t hurting anyone by racing forward, so why not let her have a little fun? Besides, it wasn’t every day that someone moved to a paradise and regained what had been so violently taken from them.
