Intertwined—head and thigh, hand and arm—they’re connected as they should be, with an unfettered view of the sun over the low wall, they enjoy the sun-dappled blue of the Gulf. For the first time since they arrived at the fortress last night, the sea is finally calm.
Nix feels his bonds flow in an endless circuit, with himself at the center like a hub; around and around in an endless infinity of love.
“Can we go home now?” Rowan whines.
“Fuck, yes. Sounds good to me,” Gideon grumps, before laying his head on Jamie’s shoulder. “I need my kitchen. We’ve been eating like shit.”
“I miss Tsuki,” Leo says, surprising everyone, and sliding a hand up under Nix’s pant leg.
Nix lets his fingers drift over each of his mates, seeking the warm pulse of life beneath their skin—a touch to a sore forehead, the steady rise of a familiar chest, the soft curve of a belly peeking over undone dress pants. The inside of a muscled thigh, the curve of a still-damp nose, the smoothness of a hand resting on their pack babies, the tension smoothed between storm-dark eyes.
Each connection is deliberate and reverent.
It’s the same finger the Goddess used to return Aleksander Withers to The Plain—yet now, unharmed, it hums with a different kind of power: a life-force flowing rich and infinite through the bonds tying him to these men.
He feels it—the pulse of the Goddess’s magic surging through him.
It courses through everything—every leaf and stone, every beast and being, human and Were alike. The hues of the magic shift and shimmer, most vivid in the waves of devotion surging along his bonds.
It’s pure.
He realizes this is his true gift: the boundless love he’s been graced with in this life and—he hopes—in every life yet to come.
28
Epilogue One: (Gideon and Finn)
Gideon
After Carnell’s party and Withers’s “departure,” and after the secret service had cleared out, Lauren had shoved the keys to the beach property (the one that was coincidentally next to Carnell’s mansion—wouldn’t that have been a disaster?) into his hand.
She’d told them she’d had their belongings collected from the apartment and the Guild, with a promise from Ignatius that he would see them soon. She’d also arranged for a plane to be at St. Pete–Clearwater International in three days, to take them home.
With a firmly worded, “Please,pleasestay out of trouble,” she’d narrowed her eyes pointedly at him. “I mean you, Gideon.”
He’d agreed easily, even though it hadn’t beenhimhanging over a castle wall or disintegrating a villain with magic.
Just saying.
Rowan ranges across the lawn in Wolf form, zigzagging back and forth as he tracks the scents of agents and Carnell’s visitors, never letting the group out of his sight.
Gideon spots his newly “crowned” cousin in the distance, effortlessly commanding the staff as they clear away the remnants of the party, completely unbothered by the chaos, in his element as both servant and King.
At some point, while they had been tying up loose ends, Connall must have swapped his party clothes for an all-black suit strikingly similar to the one Gideon had worn. Waving casually as they passed through the atrium, he’d tossed in a cheeky wink before slipping back into the house as if he owned it.
And Gideon guesses that now he did.
Not a single guest had dared to linger—no surprise there. Nobody wanted to risk being caught at the scene of Carnell’s death or Withers’s vanishing act.
They’re Connall’s problem now, and while heshouldfeel a bit of remorse about that, he doesn’t. He’s done letting Carnell influence any part of Gideon’s freedom.
The front drive is eerily quiet, save for the two rentals belonging to the pack.
Jay had left the Buick parked ten miles away in a hidden stand of trees, so itshouldhave been weird that Jay held the Buick’s key fob in his hand—no doubt a small but telling sign of his mother-in-law’s so-called “magical” connections.
Gideon doesn’t have the energy to untangle that mystery either, or dwell on the very real Goddess magic he’d witnessed tonight.
For once, he lets himself bask in the raw, unshakable freedom coursing through him. Carnell is gone, incapable of ever harming his family again. And for the first time in his entire existence, Gideon can say he’s fulfilled the task given to him all those years ago.
