"Eternity," Beth repeated softly, the reality of it still hard to believe.
She gazed up at the stars, trying to wrap her mind around the concept. Not just decades or centuries, but millennia stretching before her. She would see technologies develop, nations rise and fall, history unfold in real-time rather than through textbooks.
And through it all, she would have Tyr at her side. Tobi too, with his irrepressible humor and loyalty. The clan, with its ancient traditions and surprising adaptability. And she hadWhisper, too, who had survived the transformation to become part of her new hybrid nature.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Tyr's breath stirred her hair.
Beth smiled, leaning into his embrace. "Just thinking about time. How different it feels now."
"It never stops being strange," Tobi offered, plucking a blade of grass to twirl between his fingers. "Even after centuries, I still find myself surprised by how quickly decades pass."
"But some moments," Tyr added, his arms tightening around Beth, "feel like they could last forever."
Beth turned in his embrace, her heart hammering against her ribs. When she met his eyes—those impossibly blue eyes that had seen centuries pass—her voice came out barely above a whisper. "Like this one?"
"Exactly like this one." His cool lips found hers in a kiss that promised countless such moments to come.
Above them, the stars wheeled in their ancient patterns, marking time as they had for billions of years. Beth watched them with new eyes, still amazed that she existed at all—a shifter/vampire hybrid that should have been impossible, yet here she was, embracing the endless night that had become her domain.
Not an ending, she realized, but a beginning. An eternal beginning, with infinite possibilities stretching before her like the star-filled sky.
And for the first time in her life, with Tyr at her side, she had all the time in the world to explore them.
