EPILOGUE #3
Fletcher’s thumb brushes over my ankle gently. “Good.”
Valeria appears below in the yard at that exact moment, speaking with two guards near the armory. She looks up and spots us, so I lift two fingers. She returns the gesture without a smile or softness. Just two people with respect for one another.
She kept her word after the Hale fallout.
After Hale was dragged out, Valeria tore through every name tied to him.
Officers who helped him lost their positions.
People who looked away were removed. Better ones took their places.
Rules changed. Doors got windows. Research got witnesses.
And Omegas got choices written into law with consequences sharp enough to matter.
Valeria didn’t save Haven Ridge by becoming a nicer, kinder person. She saved it by being honest, and I’ll always respect the hell out of that.
“Fuck’s sake, Kota, stop moving,” Maine snaps, tugging my hand back down.
“I waved.”
“Yeah, with the hand I’m working on, dumbass,” he points out.
“My other one has cake in it.”
“That’s it,” he says. “One glitter nail.”
“No, wait—”
“Two glitter nails. Keep going and I’ll keep adding.”
“You’re diabolical,” I breathe, eyeing him like I don’t even know him.
“You drove me to this point,” he tells me, shaking his head at me like I’m the biggest problem in his life.
I look at the others and whisper loudly, “Pack meeting. Glitter is emotional warfare.”
Kaito studies my nails for a beat before he says, “One glitter nail could be tactical.”
My jaw drops. “You too?”
He shrugs. “Reflective. Distracting. Could work.”
Ewan nods in agreement. “Blind your enemies with boujee.”
“Might suit you,” Fletcher adds, lips twitching.
Xeon looks at my hand, then at me. “You’d pretend to hate it.”
I glare at him. He knows too much. That’s the problem with these bonds. They give people the audacity to notice stuff and things and then use those stuff and things to stab you in the back with glitter polish and killer smiles.
Maine smiles slowly, a villainous look if I’ve ever seen one.
“No,” I warn, shaking my head slowly, kind of scared to look away from him now.
But it’s too late. He paints my smallest nail with glitter polish he absolutely brought with him on purpose. The man has a plan and it was executed perfectly with the help of my own pack. The nerve of it all.
I watch it shimmer in the sun.
Gross.
Horrifying.
Sparkly.
Pretty.
A tiny little night sky on my finger.
“I hate it,” I mutter.
“No, you don’t,” five voices answer at the same time, including Maine.
Damn them all.
The laugh that escapes me is loud enough to scare the shit out of a bird on the next roof over, but I don’t swallow it. I don’t look around to see who heard it.
Let ’em hear it.
A year ago, I painted my nails alone in a tree while Zeds dragged their rotting corpses through the road below to an explosion I set in an abandoned house as a diversion.
My hair was hidden under Maine’s old faded hat, my scent buried, body folded small inside oversized clothing, and waiting for the danger to pass so I could keep on pretending that survival was the same thing as living.
Now Maine paints them for me on a roof inside a compound that has learned my name and uses it.
My hat rests next to my roses, not gone or forgotten, just no longer needed to survive.
The wind lifts my hair from my shoulders, showing every pale patch on my skin, every bite mark lined on my throat, and every part of me I once tried to make smaller until I felt like I could disappear.
Ewan leans against my side.
Kaito’s fingers settle at the base of my spine.
Xeon passes me another pastry before I ask.
Fletcher watches the gate, but his hand stays warm on my ankle.
Maine blows carefully on my nails, concentrating like the fate of the world depends on whether I smudge.
Maybe it does. At least, my world, anyway.
“You know,” my brother says. “I’m very good at this.”
“Oh, look at that. Your ego is getting shiny, too,” I tell him with a smart-ass smile.
“Glitter will do that,” he counters with a matching smile that makes us look too similar.
“I’m going to throw you off the roof,” I threaten, still smiling.
“No, you’re not,” he says, still matching the grin and freaking me out.
I snicker, breaking first, then look down at my nails. Black, glossy, one tiny glittering crime of polish.
Then I look at my brother putting away the bottles.
Then my pack surrounding me.
Then Haven Ridge below us, messy and loud and alive.
“Nah,” I say softly, my smile turning into something different. Something real and honest and me. “I won’t.”
For once, the quiet after that doesn’t hurt.
It holds.
Not like a cage.
Not like a secret.
Like a space I finally know how to stand and belong in.
Dakota O’Reilly.
Omega.
Immune.
Sister.
Mate.
Pack.
Mine.
The gate opens below for the evening patrol to come home.
The world beyond it waits, still broken and hungry and endless.
I lift my glitter nail to the setting sun and grin.
“Okay,” I say. “Now someone tell me how fucking dramatic this will look with a knife.”
THE END