No.
No… no…
This wasn’t real.
Couldn’t be real.
Her gaze wandered weakly across the ceiling… across the lights… across the strangers… until it found him. And stayed there.
Kaelith’s lips parted.
His breathing became uneven.
His hands shook violently at his sides.
“Kaelith,” Lorcan whispered beside him.
But he heard nothing.
Saw nothing.
Except her.
Alive.
Breathing.
Looking at him.
His flower.
His everything. As if taken away and returned back.
His chest rose sharply. Tears blurred his vision so badly he could barely see her. Yet somehow… he’d never seen anything more clearly in his life.
Amara’s cracked lips trembled. And though no sound came… he read them perfectly.
Hi.
A strangled, broken laugh escaped him as tears streamed freely down his face. And for the first time in his life… the most feared man in the world looked utterly, devastatingly human.
He pressed his back against the wall, as if all the weight left him, gravity defied him, lord showed mercy, and whispered.
“…Welcome back, little flower.”
Epilogue
Three Years Later…
Morning arrived softly over the De Luca estate.
Golden sunlight spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting the dark wooden floors in shades of amber and gold. The storm that had once lived inside these walls had long since faded, replaced by laughter… by warmth… by life.
Byher.
Kaelith stood barefoot in the nursery doorway, his broad shoulders filling the frame, his dark hair tousled from sleep, the first few buttons of his black shirt undone.
And in his arms was compete chaos.
