I closed my eyes, letting their love wash over me through the bonds. Four distinct presences, each one precious, each one irreplaceable. And me. Their omega. Their mate. The center around which they all orbited, the anchor that had finally given their long lives meaning.
"I love you," I said, the words flowing easily now—words I'd once been afraid to speak, afraid to feel. "All of you. More than I ever thought I could love anything."
"We love you too," they answered, four voices blending into one, the words resonating through our bonds until I felt them in my very soul. "Forever."
Outside our cave, the ocean stretched endless and eternal. Above us, the surface world continued on, unaware of the family thriving in the depths below. Ships sailed overhead, carrying passengers to distant ports, their hulls dark shadows against the fading light.
None of that mattered. Not the surface world, not the life I'd left behind, not the centuries stretching before us. All that mattered was this moment—surrounded by my mates, safe and loved and finally, finally home.
I had fled an arranged mating to an alpha who saw me as property. I had hidden on a fishing boat, pretending I wasn't an omega, stealing moments of peace in the ocean I'd always loved.
Instead, I had found everything I'd ever wanted.
Vale began to sing—the new song, the one he'd written for me—and the melody wrapped around us like a blanket, beautiful and haunting and perfect. Kaelan's arms tightened around me. Riven's hand found mine. Thane pressed closer, his heartbeat syncing with my own.
As I drifted toward sleep, wrapped in the arms of my pack, I felt a purr rumble through my chest—deep and contented, the sound of an omega who had found her place in the world.
This was my happily ever after.
It was also the beginning of our long lives.
The End
Chapter Thirty-Seven
VALE
We should have sunk theWindchasermonths ago when Riven and Kaelan had killed Cort. They made him suffer for every look and every touch he'd inflicted on our mate. We'd thought that would be enough. The primary threat was eliminated. The alpha who had stalked her, cornered her, breathed his foul breath against her skin while she trembledwas gone, torn apart and scattered across the ocean floor where the deep-sea scavengers had long since picked his bones clean.
We'd let the ship sail on. Let the rest of the crew continue their miserable lives, thinking ourselves merciful. Thinking Lily would heal now that the worst of them was dead.
We'd been wrong.
Six months. Six months of watching her flinch at unexpected sounds. Six months of feeling her nightmares pulse through the bond—dreams where Decker's sneering face loomed over her, where the captain's cold indifference condemned her to suffering, where faceless betas whispered‘cursed’and ‘bad luck’and ‘should have left her at the port’. Six months of her waking in the night, trembling, her scent soured with old fear.
Last week, she'd frozen in the middle of preparing a meal when the scent of fish guts drifted past—some catch Riven had brought back. She'd gone pale, her hands shaking, and it had taken an hour for all four of us to coax her back from whatever dark memory had swallowed her whole.
That was when Kaelan had called us together. That was when we'd decided.
TheWindchaserhad to die.
I found Riven in the outer caves, sharpening his claws against volcanic rock with methodical, vicious strokes. The sound grated through the water like a promise of violence. His golden eyes lifted to meet mine, and I saw my own dark anticipation reflected there.
"Tonight," I said.
His lips pulled back from his teeth. "Finally."
We swam back to the main nest together, moving through familiar passages lit by the soft glow of bioluminescence. Lily was there, curled between Kaelan and Thane, her hair fanned out around her like a sunset captured underwater. Her tail—that beautiful tail—was wrapped around Thane's, scales glinting in the ambient light.
She looked up as we entered, and even now, after all these months, the sight of her made something in my chest tighten with fierce, protective love.
"You're going tonight." It wasn't a question. She could feel it through the bonds—our restlessness, our barely leashed aggression, the dark anticipation humming beneath our skin. She'd learned to read us so well in the time she'd been ours.
"Yes." Kaelan's voice was quiet, his dark eyes fixed on our mate. "Riven and Vale. Thane and I will stay with you."
"Why now?" she asked softly, though I suspected she already knew. "It's been months. I thought... I thought we were letting it go."
"We were," Thane's gentle voice was unusually hard. "Until last week. Until we watched you fall apart over the smell of fish guts because some worthless beta who had pulled a mean prank on you with them in the past."
