I laugh softly, and it’s a sound that reverberates strangely in my chest.
“We will teach you to fly,” I murmur to them. “But first, you will learn to crawl and walk.”
Aura leans into my side, exhausted but radiant.
“This,” she says quietly, watching them breathe. “This is what my magic was for.”
Outside, the first light of dawn spills over the city.
Inside, three new heartbeats join ours.
The future of dragonkind rests safe in our arms.
Epilogue
AURA
If you’d told me three years ago that I’d be standing in Blackwood Forest at a birthday party with wolves, bears, and dragons, and no one fighting, I would have laughed.
Or run.
Or assumed it was a trap.
But here I am, holding a bowl of potato salad while wolf kids chase dragon toddlers around a smoky barbecue, and the only real risk is that Hunter’s third try at cooking venison ribs fails like the first two.
“Those are charcoal,” Goldie, the bear’s mate, calls cheerfully as she passes the grill.
Hunter squints at the grill. “They’re smoked.”
“They’re cremated, dude,” Evan corrects mildly. “I told you we should have served them raw.”
Goldie grins at me and lowers her voice conspiratorially. “It’s fine. If they blacken all the meat, we can eat the flapjacks I made.”
“Mmm...” I say. “I love flapjacks.”
“Evan calls them crispy porridge,” she says with a bright laugh.
“I don’t know if that makes them more or less appealing.”
I’m still smiling when Ahya’s voice cuts through the clearing.
She’s four today.
Four.
Her growth slowed, thankfully, so now she looks her age. Still, there’s a calmness and maturity in her that’s older than her years.
She stands on the picnic table like a little woodland queen, her red curls shining in the sun and her hands on her hips. For a moment, I picture her as the girl in the red hood, walking bravely through the woods and making friends with wolves instead of being afraid.
But this isn’t that story. There’s no wolf here to harm her. Now, they stand behind her, protecting her always.
She bossily directs her younger wolf siblings, Thoren and Fredrick, in the construction of what she insists is a “castle tower.”
It is, objectively, a pile of logs.
“Higher!” she commands.
“Careful,” I call as Kaspian attempts to scale it using partial claws.
