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She climbs over my lap, running for the bathroom where I hear her spit into the sink. I look at Ferris, whose brows are lowered in a confused, uncertain look.

“Should we try it?” he asks with trepidation.

I take the bottle from him and tip the root beer into my mouth. At first, the taste is reminiscent of Raine’s scent and slick, spicy and smooth with creamy undertones, but very quickly the sweetened taste dissolves into something harsh, bitter, and spoiled.

I try to warn Ferris, but he’s already taking a sip too, and then we’re both running naked to join Raine where she stands at the sink, swishing water in her puffed-out cheeks.

She silently laughs as she watches us, making room in the small bathroom for us to spit into the sink too, and then Ferris dumps the offending liquid down the drain, saving the bottle instead.

Raine spits again, then whispers, horrified, “That’s not what I taste like, right?”

Ferris and I exchange a look before breaking into hysterical laughter. “No, baby,” I tell her, “not even a little.”

Ferris palms his face, hiding his amused embarrassment. “I guess it is probably over a hundred years old.”

Raine starts laughing uncontrollably and I scoop her up, hauling her back into her nest so that we can familiarize ourselves with her heavenly taste once again.

Afterward, we lie in our nest sweaty and happy, laughing and kissing, and I know with certainty that this was always where my life was headed. Changes are happening in my territory, and the world continues to heal around us every day, constantly reminding us to persevere. Ferris and Raine are finally where they belong, and they’re carving their places in my clan more each day.

Ren, Tore, and Vale will need to figure their shit out—everyone can see the threads between them—but I push them out of my mind and drown myself in my pack. Exactly where I’m supposed to be.

We’re together.

Forget the rest.

DIGITAL ARCHIVES

FROM THE PERSONAL JOURNALS OF RAINE, LATER DIGITIZED

I can still remember my time at Grand Prairie, and while I can appreciate that everything that happened there led me to my future, I quite like what happened after the best.

EPILOGUE - REN

Cascades Territory, Northern Pacific

For the one hundredth time, Raine says, “You are so lucky to have me.”

I sigh. “You’re only here as a favor to Dair.”

“Right,” she drawls, “because my alpha would rather me be here toiling through your mess than lying naked in his den?”

We both know that I need her, desperately. My research is a disaster; it’s never been fully organized and only grows more complicated with additions from each bunker that we find and destroy. There are piles of research from four bunkers. Soon to be all five.

Raine loves to remind me that this would go so much faster with Vale helping too, but she’s rarely in human form, and every time I think about her, I get twitchy, and my scent starts to burn like a beach bonfire. I have no idea what to do about Vale, the complicated feelings she stirs up inside of me, or the confusing betrayal I feel toward both her and Tore.

“Raine,” I growl, but it’s just noise. She already knows that I approve of her because she’s here, in my personal space, touching my research. Deep down, I think I might even like her being here. Spending your days as I have been is very lonely. Or it was, until she invaded like a mold.

I’ve had to teach Raine everything I’ve come to understand about Biters since she started working with me a little less than a month ago. For starters, one of the bunkers believed that the Biter virus behaves the same way as rabies, a virus from the Before that affected the brains of animals and was transmitted through bites. It’s a very interesting report, especially when paired with supplemental reading about how rabies adapted to specific animal hosts, creating species-specific variants.

Could the Biter virus be species-specific, too?

Today she’s reading through experimental notes from the bunker where Vale and I lived. I warned her that the contents would be horrific, but nothing can actually prepare someone for what they were doing under the earth.

In the particular experiment she’s reading, bunker Guardians went to the surface to capture a Biter and brought it into the medical wing for observation. They did this every couple of weeks, examining how long Biters can go without eating any flesh (four months), if they can bleed out when a limb is removed (no), what measures they will go to when offered human flesh (any), and eventually, they moved on to trials in which they allowed the Biters to turn people so that they could study the transformation.

That’s what they were doing when I was forced into the medical research labs as a test subject. That’s how I know so much about the transformation process and why Dair consulted me about Ferris on the train. I have not only read about these experiments, but seen them too.

Now, Raine and I are looking to see if there were any bite survivors in the trials across the four bunkers. So far, there hasn’t been any.