That made him laugh. “Yes, we should seek him out.”
Her eyes went wide with surprise. “You know him?”
“I do. Castiel even owes me a favor or two. What was it you said about the supernatural community? It really does seem quite small at times.”
“I seem to have lost my phone in the death pool, so we might as well just pop over to Ava and Castiel’s place. They have a house in Mystic, close to the university, that is connected to their main residence in Italy using a portal. That way, they can live in two places at once.”
“That is a good idea.”
“We’ll have to do something similar once we get your family’s property back,” she said. “We could get a place in Mystic, then create a portal that connects both properties to cut down onteleporting back and forth all the time. That way, I can still finish school while we live at home.”
Home.
The word struck him with unexpected force, quiet and devastating in its simplicity. For a moment, Mordecai could only stare down at her, unable to speak past the sudden tightness in his throat. Home had become a foreign concept after centuries of being locked away behind the stone walls of the Supernatural Prison. It had been so long that he’d nearly forgotten what the word was supposed to mean.
But when she said it, the impossible suddenly seemed within reach. Not because of a restored estate or reclaimed domain, though he wanted those things for the sake of justice. Home was no longer a place buried in the ruins of his past.
It was her.
It was the warmth in her gaze when she looked at him, the strength of her hand holding his, and the way she spoke of their future as though it already belonged to them. Overwhelmed by a tenderness he had not allowed himself to feel in centuries, he leaned down and brushed his lips over hers in a kiss as soft as a vow.
His home was wherever his mate was.
Epilogue
“I don’t getit,” Mordecai grumbled after the movie they had just watched ended and the credits began to roll. “If the superheroes were all bitten by similar radioactive spiders, why are their powers different? Shouldn’t they all have natural webbing like spider shifters? Why do some have to rely on mechanical devices?”
“I really don’t get it either,” Lana admitted from where she was curled up against his side. “We will have to find a comic nerd to explain it to us.”
“We must have a comic nerd among us,” Claudia Snow said as she sprawled out on a recliner seat on the other side of the home theater.
Jessica Klien raised her hand and waved it proudly. “Comic nerd right here. It’s because they are different variants from different universes.”
“It’s part of the multiverse lore,” Liam Byrne, Trifecta University’s star quarterback, said around a mouthful of popcorn.
“Or they simply wanted more money by making a dozen movies based on the same comic, so they had to change a few things,” Remington Fortier commented.
His mate, Starla, laughed as she playfully slapped his arm. “You are such a cynic.”
“Now that we’ve watched a million superhero movies, how many more are on the list?” Ava Fortier asked.
Castiel Stormborn sighed. “Do we really have to watch all of them?”
“There are only a few dozen more,” Justin Lowe said, earning several snickers.
“It’s my turn to pick the next one,” Anton Anastas announced.
“No, it’s my turn,” Kyler Vespa argued.
“What I want to know is if there are real spider shifters,” Koa Murase said.
“Of course, there are,” Damien Carver told them. He was an ancient demon and an old friend of Mordecai’s who had been helping them a lot over the past few months. “But they are a pretty secretive group since most of them can produce their own poisons. That isn’t something a lot of people are comfortable with.”
As the conversation continued to swirl around them, Mordecai glanced around the room. Somehow, movie night at their house had evolved into an unofficial weekly tradition. Ever since they had returned to Mystic, their home had become a gathering place. A refuge where friends drifted in without needing an invitation. They raided the kitchen, claimed their favorite spots on the couches and at the tables, and stayed until the early hours of the morning.
At first, the effortless way Lana’s friends had welcomed him into their circle had caught him completely off guard. He’d spent too many years being a loner to know what to do with such immediate acceptance. No one interrogated him about his past or treated him like an outsider. They had simply made room for him as though he’d always belonged there.
It hadn’t taken him long to understand why. Their trust wasn’t really in him. At least, not at first. They trusted Lana, which meant that included him. If she believed Mordecai deserved a place beside her, that was all the proof they needed. Over time, that borrowed trust had transformed into something genuine. As they had come to know him, he’d become more than Lana’s mate.
