The Rift is still there. Deveraux is still out there. The Council is still watching, still harvesting, still building cages and calling them matchmaking services. Helena is in a motel room with a duffel bag and eighteen years of secrets. And somewhere in this town, Dahlia Cross is sleeping with a headache she shouldn’t have, carrying a power no one understands.
There’s so much left to do. So much we don’t know. Victor Ash’s full plan. The Deveraux family’s original connection to the Rift. Dahlia’s birth parents. The blood witch who altered Silas’s memories. The extent of the Council’s network beyond Chicago.
But tonight, in this living room, with Caroline in my arms and Griffin’s hand on my back and Silas’s presence warm at the edge of my awareness, I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
Not the naive kind. Not the kind that ignores the storm because the sky is blue. The stubborn kind. The kind that looks at a battery masquerading as a town and says, we can disconnect this. The kind that looks at years of failed bonds and says, watchme. The kind that looks at three Alphas and one Omega and says, this can work, even though everything says it shouldn’t.
Caroline pulls back and looks up at me. Her eyes are red, her face is blotchy, and she’s still wearing my flannel.
“Take me to bed,” she says.
“All of us?”
“All of you.”
I pick her up. She squeaks and wraps her arms around my neck, and Griffin laughs, and Silas shakes his head, and we walk down the hall together.
The future is uncertain. The past is a lie. The present is a cramped bedroom and a full-size bed and four people who have no business fitting together but do anyway.
It’s a start.
Spell of Hearth:
Bake bread with honey. Share warm; bonds deepen.
Epilogue: Six Months Later
The bread is burning.
I can smell it from the apothecary—charred honey and wheat seeping through the walls from the café next door. June glances up from her mortar and pestle, one eyebrow raised.
“That’s the third batch this week.”
“Tessa is distracted.” She’s been distracted ever since her breakup with August.
June smirks. “Tessa is mooning over that firefighter from Rosehill.”
“Same thing.”
The bell above the door chimes, and Amara sweeps in with her usual dramatic flair—scarf trailing, coffee in hand, energy bouncing off her like she’s swallowed a sun spell. She drops into the stool at the counter and props her chin on her fist.
“Tell me you have something for this headache. I was up until two matching charms for the Henderson wedding.”
I pull a small vial from the shelf behind me—willow bark and peppermint, simple but effective—and slide it across the counter. “On the house.”
“My favorite price.”
June goes back to her grinding, and I lean against the counter, letting the familiar rhythm of the shop settle around me. The shelves are stocked—potions lined up in neat rows, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling in bundles, the faint hum of preservation charms keeping everything fresh. The same walls I’ve looked at for years.
Everything is the same. Everything is different.
“How’s the nest coming?” Amara asks, casual in a way that means she’s been dying to ask for hours.
I feel my face warm. “It’s fine.”
“Caroline.”
