Page 110 of The Florist and Her Alphas

“Ezra,” I whisper. “I miss my ring.”

Something breaks open across his face.

His hand goes to the inside pocket of his jacket. His hand is shaking. I have never once seen Ezra Frostwood’s hands shake, not during a heat, not during a proposal, not even at gunpoint in a cabin, but they are shaking now as he comes around to the side of the bed and takes my hand in both of his.

Nobody in the room breathes.

He slides the ring back onto my finger, slow, careful, like he’s afraid of hurting me even though it can’t possibly hurt, like the weight of the metal alone might be too much for what’s left of me. It settles into place exactly where it belongs.

All four of them go quiet. This is a different silence. Reverent. Terrified. Grateful. They stand around my bed and simply look at me like I am something they are only now allowing themselves to believe is real.

Ezra cups my face in both hands, so gently it’s barely pressure at all, his thumbs brushing the line of my jaw.

“We missed you,” he says, and his voice, always so measured, so controlled, breaks clean in half on the last word. “We thought we lost you.”

The tears come before I can stop them, sliding hot down into my hair, into the pillow, and my chest aches with a feeling too large for what’s left of my body to hold.

“Every day,” I whisper, “I wished I could tell you I was okay. I could hear how sad you all were. That was the hardest part. Harder than any of it. Hearing you cry and not being able to reach you.”

“You’re here now,” he says.

“I love you,” I tell him, my voice breaking apart on the words the same way his did. “I love you so much, Ezra. I love all of you.”

He leans down slowly, careful of the line still taped to the back of my hand, careful of everything, and kisses me.

The kiss is soft and searching and impossibly gentle, his mouth moving against mine like he’s relearning the shape of it, like he needs to be sure I’m really here.

I kiss him back with everything I have left, which isn’t much.

When he finally pulls back, he brushes his thumbs beneath my eyes, wiping the tears away one at a time, unhurried, like he has all the time left in the world to do it.

Thirty

LIANA

Six Months Later

Six months later, we’re visiting my family’s estate. It’s safe now that Silus, Magnus, and the rest of their pack are dead. I’ve been waiting to come back for so long.

Knee-high grass drags at my ankles as I walk.

Ezra walks close beside me, his hand hovering an inch from my lower back. Cole is a half step behind us, quiet, watchful. Julian and August trail a little further back, taking in the boarded windows, the moss creeping up the slate roof, the porch swing hanging crooked from one rusted chain.

I lead them around the side of the house. My feet knows the way by pure memory. It’s my family’s home that I’ve been too scared to visit while Silus and his pack were still looking for me.

The old stone wall comes into view first, waist-high, half swallowed by ivy and bramble. I stop at the gap where the garden gate used to hang.

“This is it,” I say. My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to. I lift a hand and point toward a tangle of brush near the center of the wreckage, where the weeds have grown thick and wild over something low and pale. “That’s where the bench is. Under there.”

“Is that where…your grandma died?” asks Ezra.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Right in front of me. The rest of my family were murdered in the house.”

I press a hand flat against my belly without meaning to. The babies shift, a small rolling motion under my palm.

The garden used to breathe.

She taught me to prune here. She taught me which weeds pulled easy and which ones were tough. I used to kneel beside her in the dirt with my knees soaked through, and she’d let me cut the dead heads off the roses even though I always cut too much, and she’d laugh and say the roses forgive everything except neglect.