Mama Rue keeps her eyes on the girl with the rifle.
“You done, child?” she asks.
Briar’s fingers loosen. The rifle slips from her hands and lands in the dirt with a dull thud.
Then she looks at me.
Not through me. Not past me. At me.
And she runs.
I barely get to my feet before she hits me hard enough to drive me back a step. Her arms lock around my neck. I catch her under the thighs and lift her clean off the ground. She clings to me like she is not drowning anymore, like she is choosing where to put all that force instead of being crushed under it.
Her whole body shakes against mine.
I bury my face in her hair and hold on. “You’re safe. Sweet girl, you’re safe.”
But she already knows.
She did not just kill the man who hunted her.
She chose herself.
And then she chose me.
Epilogue
Briar
Smoke curls through the trees in slow white ribbons, carrying the smell of meat and wood and the cornbread Ivy baked in the big cast-iron pan. The whole clearing feels different tonight. Not quieter. Fuller. Softer in the places that used to stay hard.
Rafe’s hand stays warm at the small of my back as we walk from the cabin toward the tables the men set up near the firepit. Rough planks laid across stumps. Mismatched chairs. Blankets spread on the grass for the little ones. Nothing fancy. Everything solid.
Everything ours.
Children weave through legs and shadows and dusk like they were born knowing this mountain belongs to them. Lucas barrels past with a stick in one hand and berry stains on his mouth, Aurora calling after him to slow down while Silas catches him one-handed before he can run straight into the firewood pile. Lucas only laughs and twists free, already running again.
I smile before I mean to.
I don’t remember the last time it came without permission.
To one side, Boone has Serena on his shoulder while Ivy tries to hand him a bowl and scold him at the same time. He acts like the bowl is the hardest thing he’s ever lifted in his life, and Serena keeps grabbing at his hair with one sticky fist. Ivy rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling too.
Fern is planted at Elias’s boot, reading a book about botany and randomly pointing out plants. Elias mutters words I can’t hear, and Tandy laughs. She’s heard that exact nonsense before.
Near the long table, Knox and Finn hover around Mercy so hard it would be funny even if her belly weren’t so round now. Mercy swats one hand away, then the other, and keeps right on directing where the cornbread goes as if being heavily pregnant has only made her bossier.
Malachi and Rowan move quieter than the others, side by side near the far end of the clearing, laying out plates and mugs with the ease of people who don’t need to speak much to work together.
My chest pulls tight.
Not in the old way. Not fear. Something fuller. And it catches me off guard when it rises too fast.
Rafe’s fingers brush mine. He feels it.
“You alright, sweetheart?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
