I don’t know where we’re headed until I see long beams cut across the water.
The lighthouse. The iconic lighthouse memorialized in Fairhaven’s crest, emblazoned on our uniforms, cast in iron at the academy’s gates. Long shafts of light shine across the bay, moving in a mesmerizing rhythm as the beacon at the top of the lighthouse turns.
We park and Luca draws a thin picnic blanket—and an accompanying picnic—out of the bike’s top box. Finally, after I’ve ruined two picnics, we’re getting one, not just beneath the stars, but beneath the light of the lighthouse.
I stare out across the ocean when we’ve finished our midnight meal, thinking about everything that’s happened this term. About Trinity who nearly committed a grave crime, about Rad, who did. About Trinity who took her own life and Rad who still stands to get everything he wants—everything except me.
“You’re thinking about Trinity,” Luca says quietly.
I look up at him. “How did you know?”
He shrugs. “You get this far-off look in your eyes whenever you do. It’s like you go somewhere else.”
And I do. Every time I think of Trinity, I’m taken back to the ballroom, into the dark corners of the other omega’s mind.
I may have saved Trinity and I may have saved Simon, but Rad walks free. Rad, who has been allowed to hurt so many people, still has his freedom.
And I would have taken on all that hurt and more if it meant he wouldn’t have hurt those I care for.
I sigh. “I didn’t know her enough to really miss her, but I do. I wish it didn’t have to end how it did.”
“She fought until she couldn’t fight any longer. She was brave, Juniper. Just like you.”
I nod, but I don’t know if I believe it. Standing at this precipice, wind whipping around me, I don’t feel brave.
Not enough to wage the war I must. I know so little about my father’s doings—only inklings of a much bigger picture. I have more questions, fewer answers. Nothing certain but the alphas and beta who have vowed to fight by my side.
“I feel like I’m sailing through the dark,” I murmur. “Like there’s this lighthouse but I can’t see it through the storms.”
Luca wraps me in a tight hug, and I soak in his warmth to ward off the late May night’s chill. He nuzzles against my cheek. “There will be storms, Juniper, but there will be stars, too. You may feel lost, but you’ll always find your way again—and you’ll have my help. Before you, princess, all I saw were the storms. And then I met you, my shooting star wish, my guiding light. And I found my way home. To you.”
I turn in his arms, eyes full of tears, full of moonlight and starshine. Full of him. I brush my lips against his, a question in my touch, in my gaze, and he answers it by yanking me up off the picnic blanket so fast I can’t help but laugh. He shoves the picnic blanket and the remains of our meal into my arms and then swoops me up into his, kissing me while we stumble together toward the parking lot.
That night, we say our goodbyes, not through words, but through touch. Through my fingers fisting in his hair as he sets his mouth to my skin, through those tattooed fingers sinking into me, making me moan. We make love and when I’m bound to him by his knot, we lay together, connected as an alpha and omega are meant to be, aswe’remeant to be.
I can’t bear the thought of a whole summer without him, but he slyly suggests that he’ll be there if I ever manage to sneak out, that we’ll survive this summer apart.
That “it won’t always be like this, my guiding star, my princess, my love.”
That though there will be dark nights and storms, there will be lighthouses and moonlight and star shine.
* * *
Storms rollin across the bay that night and linger as Luca and I say our goodbyes, as I watch him race back across the bridge, leather jacket held up over his head. The rumble of his motorcycle echoes back to me as he kicks it to life and peels out of the lot toward town.
I pull the hood of my raincoat over my eyes and slosh my way back to my cottage, Marcus at my side.
Saints, but I didn’t think saying goodbye would be so hard.
I’m packing up my clothes when a knock sounds at the door. I frown but let Marcus see who it is as I fold another blouse.
“It’s Reinhardt,” he calls up the stairs and I go completely still. “And he looks like a drowned rat.”
I drop the blouse and dash down the stairs, throwing the door open to see a very sodden Ian staring back at me, black hair plastered to his pale skin.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
He holds up my assistantship application, now soaked through with rain. “I’ve brought you the results of your application.”
