And Kritika, standing slightly apart, who met Nimisha's eyes and offered a smile that was small and real and cost her something and was given anyway.
Nimisha smiled back.
Bruno, released from his carrier, surveyed the assembled Ranawat family with his typical assessment, found them collectively acceptable, and then walked directly to Nimisha and sat beside her.
His tail wagged.
Once.
The family stared.
"Is he—" Shaurya started.
"Don't make it weird," Samarth said.
Bruno's tail moved again. Twice, this time.
"He's wagging," Tanisha said, awed.
"He wags," Nimisha said mildly, reaching down to scratch his ear. "Just not for everyone."
Samarth's hand settled on her lower back, warm and present and entirely natural.
She looked up at him.
He looked down at her with the particular expression that was, she'd decided, her favorite thing she'd discovered in a year of discoveries—the expression he wore when he'd stopped managing his feelings and was simply having them. Open. Certain. Completely unguarded.
"Thank you," she said quietly, for him alone.
"For what?"
"For becoming mine."
Something moved across his face—warmth and humor and love, the combination that still sometimes caught her off guard with its completeness.
"You were always mine," he said. "I just had to catch up."
"And now?"
He pulled her close, his arm around her shoulders, her home.
"Now you are magnificently mine," he said. "And I am, apparently, entirely yours."
She stood on her toes and kissed him in the entrance hall of the Ranawat estate in front of his entire family and his dog and the memory of everything they'd been before this.
He kissed her back.
Bruno sat, looked at the family, looked at his people, and closed his eyes with the satisfaction of a creature who has seen something difficult resolved correctly and is ready to move on to more important matters.
Like his dinner.
That Night - Their Bedroom
Their room.
She stood at the threshold for a moment, looking at the space that had been a prison and was now simply home.
The same bed. The same walls. The same city visible through the window.
