I press the journal to my chest. Leather and ink and something that still smells like her.
For my Kaia.
Mine.
The tears stop eventually.
Everything stops eventually.
Mouse has climbed into my lap. Walter pulses soft violet like a second heartbeat.
Six men still touching me. Still here.
I look at the wall.
Our story in light. Beginning to now.
Not an ending. Just a place to breathe.
I close the journal. Tuck it against my chest where it’s going to live from now on.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Kieran’s hand finds mine. “Wherever you want.”
I look once more at the wall. At the image of us — broken and rebuilt and somehow still standing.
Then I turn toward the door.
Mouse at my side, Walter above.
My men fall into step around me.
And I know that I’ll never be alone again.
THE END…
BONUS CHAPTER
Let’s be honest: you earned this. And you didn’t really think I’d make you go home without the beach scene, did you?
Didn’t think so.
Bonus: Kaia
Three Years Later
The southern coast is even more beautiful than Kieran described.
White sand that squeaks under my feet. Water so clear I can see straight to the bottom. The kind of warmth that sinks into your bones and stays, just like he promised all those years ago.
We’ve been coming here every year since the Gate. Same week. Same stretch of beach. Same house that started as Aspen’s “shade structure” and somehow became a villa with seven bedrooms we never use because we all end up in the same one anyway.
Three years.
Three years of healing. Of learning how to exist without something hunting us. Of figuring out what we are when we’re not fighting for our lives.
Turns out we’re this: a family. A weird, tangled, intensely sexual family who loves each other in ways that would make most people’s heads explode.
