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But then he nods, and relief pours over me, nearly bringing tears to my eyes.
“I’ll stay,” he says quietly. “If that’s what Athena wants.”
“I do,” I blurt out. “I want that. I wantallof us. Together.”
“Together,” Cayde echoes, and the four of us look at each other, the moment hanging heavily in the air.
I turn towards the car, where I’d left the dagger in the backseat, and I retrieve it, wiping it clean. “We stopped their ritual,” I tell them, rejoining the circle. “So now we’ll make one of our own.”
Dean looks at me curiously, and I reach for his hand, bringing it to my mouth. I press my lips against the fleshy base of his thumb, sucking hard at the skin there, numbing it. And then I look up at him, meeting his eyes as I press the point of the dagger into his hand, carving a shape there.
A letter.
A.
I hear Mia gasp behind me, but Dean doesn’t make a sound. He just holds my gaze as I cut, his blue eyes fixed on mine, and he doesn’t need to speak. I can read all of it in his face, everything he could possibly say to me, fierce and wilder than I’ve ever seen him.
There’s no arrogance in his face now, no carefully honed control. Just Dean,myDean, the man who fought for me tonight. Who fought forus.
I take Cayde’s hand next, and I do the same, holding his green gaze as I carve my initial into the base of my thumb, deeply enough that it will scar, just like Dean’s. And then when I’m finished, I turn to Jaxon, and he holds out his hand.
“Yes,” he says simply, and that’s all I need.
He could have left. But he chose to stay.
When I’m finished, I hold out the dagger and my hand, looking at my three boys.
“Your turn.”
They each take my hand, one at a time, leaving their initials in the same place, small and deep, next to one another at the base of my right thumb.D. C. J.
Dean reaches for me first, his hand gripping mine, blood smearing together as he kisses me fiercely, his tongue tangling with mine as the acrid scent of smoke fills the air. “Mine,” he whispers, and then he passes me to Cayde, who grips my hand too, his lips claiming mine.
“Mine,” Cayde murmurs against my lips, and then Jaxon reaches for me, the blood on his hand mingling with the rest of the red smeared across my palm, mine and Dean’s and Cayde’s.
Mine.
Jaxon kisses me, long and deep, and I can feel the certainty in him, the relief. The sense that we can start fresh, that this is a new beginning. The four of us, together, against the world.
We turn as one, blood still trickling from my hand, and watch as the mansion burns. “It’s really over, isn’t it?” Mia asks softly from behind us, and I turn to look at her, a smile spreading over my lips.
“It is.”
That’s not entirely true. There’s still other members of the society to find, the rest of the families to root out, a new way of running this town to figure out. There’s plenty to do, when it comes to making a new Blackmoor.
But that all comes tomorrow. For tonight, with the three men I love, I’m going to enjoy watching it burn, just as I’d said I would. I’m going to enjoy my victory.
They’d thought they could sacrifice me, hurt me, destroy me, but they hadn’t counted on their sons loving me, or what would happen when they did.
But all that’s over now.
My name is Athena Saint.
And Blackmoor is mine.
Keep readingfor a preview of the first book in Ivy’s upcoming series,Hunting Winter!
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