Reeve's fist closes around Garrett's thumb. The purring deepens. Garrett's expression doesn't change, but his arm tightens around the baby, pulling him closer, and for half a second the enforcer who spent years in a fighting pit looks like a man holding the only gentle thing left in the world.
I look away. Some things aren't mine to name.
I lose track of Jess somewhere between the first dance and the cake. One minute she's beside me, laughing at Diesel's attempt at the electric slide. The next, her hand slips from mine and she disappears toward the clubhouse without a word. She's a grown woman at her own wedding—she doesn't need me trailing her to the bathroom.
Then suddenly the bond detonates.
Not pain. Not fear. A spike so sharp and layered it freezes me mid-step. Shock first, cold and electric, then wonder blooming slow beneath it. Fear threading through. And under all of it, joy so big it floods my bloodstream and my hand tightens on the drink I'm holding until the glass creaks.
I set it down. Scan the courtyard.
Two minutes pass. The emotions keep rolling through, wave after wave, and I can't make sense of any of them because they're hers and she's not here to explain why her entire body just lit up like a flare.
"Finn."
Her voice. I turn. She stands at the edge of the dance floor, face drained of color.
I reach her in a few strides. My palms find her cheeks, tilting her face up. "What's wrong, Kitten? What happened?"
She takes my wrist. Pulls it from her face. Presses my palm flat against her belly and looks up at me. Her pulse races beneath mine, fast and erratic, and the emotions flooding through are so layered I can't pull them apart. All I know is she's shaking and smiling at the same time.
Her scent shifts beneath my palm. Subtle, buried deep, a warmth I've never caught on her before. Faint and alive.
"You're gonna be a daddy, Finn."
My knees almost buckle. I pick her up—right there on the dance floor, in front of every brother, every friend, every person in this courtyard. I wrap my arms around my wife, lift her off the ground, and bury my face in her neck against the claiming mark and breathe.
"I love you." The words come out wrecked. "I love you both."
Her arms lock around my neck. Her laughter shakes through her whole body, wet and bright, and I hold her tighter and feel the bond hum between us—between all three of us now, the third heartbeat too faint to track but there, present, real.
Knox figures it out from my face.Sarah crosses the courtyard in a few strides, Reeve reclaimed from Garrett and riding her hip. "Are you—" Jess nods, eyes bright. Sarah's face crumples. "Our babies are going to grow up together." She pulls Jess into a hug with Reeve wedged between them, the baby grabbing a fistful ofJess's wedding dress and holding on.Betty calls from her chair, "Took you long enough."
The motorcycle rumbles beneath us on the road out of Nightfall Cove.
Jess's arms circle my waist, fingers laced above my belt buckle, her cheek pressed between my shoulder blades. The claiming mark pulses at the edge of my awareness. The necklace I tucked around her neck after the ceremony, the twin peaks pendant, my mother's chain, rests against her collarbone next to the scar I put there.
I stop at a red light. Turn in the seat and kiss her, tasting champagne and salt and the woman who followed me into a garden at my brother's wedding and changed everything.
"I love you, Mrs. Stone."
"I love you too." She grins against my mouth."One of the nurses at the clinic put in her transfer after the storm. Can't blame her—Category four isn't in most job descriptions." She presses her cheek back against my spine. "We're posting for a traveling nurse next month. Hopefully someone who doesn't scare easy."
"You worried about coverage?"
"I'm worried about finding someone who won't faint the first time Garrettor your brothers walk in for a checkup." She presses her cheek back against my spine. "We'll figure it out."
"Now drive before Knox catches up with more embarrassing stories."
The light turns green, her arms tight around me, and the engine carries us forward into the dark.
Epilogue
Jess - One week later
The toilet bowl and I have developed a morning routine.
Six a.m., on the dot, my stomach revolts against the concept of consciousness. I make it from the bed to the bathroom in four seconds flat—a personal record—and Finn's footsteps hit the hallway two seconds behind me, because the bond jolts him awake the instant nausea rolls through.
