She was mine. For now. For always.
“Kiss me, Lucien.”
Her wish was my command as I bent over her and captured her lips in a sensual kiss. Silver and gold poured, tangling and duelling in time with our rocking bodies.
I took her against the tree with deep, punishing strokes and our power kept building—blinding in the dark forest, soaking into every shrub and flower.
The softest chirps of crickets appeared, followed by the twitterof birds.
Our eyes locked as I drove into her, but we didn’t say anything.
Didn’t acknowledge that we might not be able to bring back those who’d died, but...we created life all the same. What that made us, I didn’t know. What we’d become, I supposed we’d find out.
But as we rocked and made love, we made a vow to do whatever it took to make things better. To guard and defend all those that couldn’t. To protect the weak. To record history so future generations never forgot.
To be happy after so much pain.
And as we came in a riot of frost and fire, a panther roared in the woods.
Whisper answered it.
And I knew.
I knew that at least one soul had returned from the disaster of that night. The caged and tortured panther that’d died because of me.
Alive and somewhere on this mountain, Whisper now had a friend.
A surge of gratitude filled me.
An overwhelming sense of hope as I kissed Rook so damn hard.
A future of possibilities unfurled where our small family would exist on the fringes of humanity.
Hidden but happy.
Different but the same.
Together and bonded...for always.
Epilogue One
“ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING?”
I scowled at Lucien as we walked side by side through the bustling streets of a city we hadn’t bothered to learn its name. “Nope. None whatsoever, but...humour me.”
He wisely didn’t say anything and let me focus.
A couple of years had passed since we’d restored the Gaoligong Mountains, and the guilt that I hadn’t been able to find the souls we’d killed that night was a constant thorn in my blissful happiness.
The only soul wehadbeen able to help reincarnate turned out to be the panther Lucien had found in a cage, starved and tortured, who’d died on the cusp of freedom.
We’d named her Echo—thanks to the echo of her life repeating itself...her soul reappearing after so long.
Whisper had adopted her as his and our little family of three had become a family of four. We lived quietly in Ashfall Cliff, slowly transforming the ruins into perfect pavilions thanks to Lucien learning how to manipulate his fire to rebuild the wreckage of before.
Echo’s appearance had filled us all with hope that we could pay back the debt from accidentally killing so many, but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t summon any more.
Even Echo’s arrival had been...strange.
