I pull Grace back into my arms, and she comes willingly, tucking herself against my side despite the blood covering me.
"It's really over," she whispers.
"It's really over."
Phantom claps me on the shoulder, his hand coming away bloody. "Let's go home."
Home. To Sharp. To the ranch. To our life.
I help Grace into the truck—she doesn't want to let go of me, so I climb in beside her, pull her onto my lap.
Banshee slides into the driver's seat without being asked, understanding that I need to hold my wife right now.
The convoy forms—bloodied, exhausted, but victorious.
We pull away from the Copperhead Kings clubhouse, leaving the bodies and the blood and the violence behind.
Leaving Venom's corpse cooling on the floor of his office with a bullet hole in his head.
Grace's hand finds mine, threads through my fingers despite the blood, and holds on tight.
"What happens now?" she asks quietly.
"Now we live," I say. "We build our life."
I close my eyes, Grace's hand in mine, her body warm against my chest, and let myself believe it.
It's over, and we can finally, finally, go home.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Grace
I’m safe.
That's the first thought in my mind—not fear, not anxiety, not the hypervigilance I've lived with for weeks.
Just safety.
Shadow's arms are around me, his chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of sleep.
His face is turned toward mine, and in the early morning light filtering through the curtains, I can see the cuts and bruises from last night's battle.
A gash along his cheekbone. Bruising on his jaw. Split knuckles on the hand resting on my hip.
Evidence of what he did for me.
He went to war. Killed for me. Nearly died for me.
And I'm not horrified by what he did. I'm grateful.
That should probably worry me—the fact that I've accepted this level of brutality as normal, as necessary, as love. But it doesn't.
This is my life now. This is who I married. This is what protection looks like in this world.
And I chose it, but more than that, I grew up in this life.
Maybe it was always in the cards for me to be with someone in the club, even if I didn’t always see it that way.
