Page 383 of Immune

“You’re already outside,” I point out, looking around to make sure that we are, in fact, outside.

“Not fresh enough.”

Ewan grins. “Want my headphones? They’ve grown to be very emotionally supportive.”

“They look like they lost a fight with a gate,” Maine counters.

“They won in spirit.”

I laugh. Small. Tired. Mine.

Xeon turns his hand palm-up on the step between us and I only hesitate for a split second before I put my hand in his. Fletcher’s fingers brush my knee. Kaito’s shoulder rests against his. Ewan’s boot stays hooked near my ankle. Maine nudges the brim of his hat down over my eyes.

I shove it back up. “Rude.”

“You were brooding.”

“It’s called reflecting, Maine. You should try it sometime.”

“Same haunted little face,” he says, poking my cheek with the tip of his index finger.

So I bite his shoulder. Mostly gently.

He yelps. “Kota.”

Not that gently after all.

“Poke the haunted face, pay the consequences,” I joke as soon as I let go of him.

The laugh that moves through us does not fix everything, but it’s real.

Tomorrow, Mercer opens the first file. Valeria will start tearing out Hale’s corruption and rot. And the compound will either learn, or I become everyone’s worst nightmare with knives. Maybe even both.

But tonight, I allow myself to sit under a broken sky with my brother on one side, my pack on the other, and a key in my pocket with my name on it.

Because when I look at the gate, I don’t see a way to run.

I finally see a way forward.

EPILOGUE

DAKOTA

ONE YEAR LATER

Maine is actually going to ruin my hand.

Not with violence. And not with blood. Both of which I think I would prefer over the real criminal he’s about to use to ruin my goddamn hand. He sits in front of me, cross-legged with one of my hands balanced on his knee like he’s in the depths of restoring a priceless painting instead of just my nails.

I eye the glitter like it’s personally offended my ancestors and their ancestors before them, wondering what hellhole Maine found it in. I must be putting too much energy into that instead of keeping my hand still, because Maine glares up at me from under his eyelashes, a frown firmly in place.

“Hold still,” he requests a second time, bent over my fingers with the intense focus of a professional bomb defuser.

I roll my eyes. “I am holding still.”

“You literally twitched,” he points out.

“Can’t prove it. My soul twitched. My hand was innocent,” I counter, eyeing the brush as it drags along my index fingernail.