Chapter 56
brYLEE
Laughter reaches my ears first—bright and melodious, like wind chimes in a summer breeze—eliciting a smile that spreads across my face before I even realize it's there.
I stand at the window of the east wing, watching my children chase their cousins through the maze of hedges that Teddie had planted three years ago—for the children, he'd said, as if this ancient stone castle needed another reason to feel like home.
The hedges have grown thick and wild now, a labyrinth of emerald walls that catch the afternoon light and hold it, glowing like stained glass.
“Mom! Mom, look!” My second youngest, Elara, stands atop a weathered stone bench, her dark curls bouncing with each excited hop. She waves something green and probably very much alive, her voice carrying that particular pitch of childhood triumph. “I found a frog! A big one!”
I press my palm flat against the cool glass, my heart expanding with that familiar ache—the one that never really goes away, the one that whispers, I made this. We made this. Look at them all, breathing and laughing and alive.
There are five of them. Five miracles I didn't believe possible, running wild through the palace grounds with their cousins—Teddie and Caran's three adopted children, who came to us from a neighboring kingdom two years ago, thin and wary as feral cats, and now laughing so loud I can hear them through two floors of solid stone.
“She's going to release it in the ballroom,” Ridge murmurs, sliding his arms around my waist from behind. He rests his chin on my shoulder, his stubble rough against my skin, his warmth seeping into my back like sunlight through linen. “I give it ten minutes before absolute chaos.”
“Seven,” Luka corrects, passing by with two champagne flutes that catch the light and fracture it into rainbows.
He's grayer at the temples now, the silver threading through his brown hair like moonlight through a forest canopy.
It suits him—makes him look distinguished, like a scholar from the old paintings.
“Elara's got that look in her eye. The same one you get when you're plotting something.”
“Are you saying I'm chaotic?” I ask, arching an eyebrow.
“I'm saying you're passionate,” he replies with a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes. “And our daughter is her mother's child.”
They all wear their years differently—Luka with his reading glasses permanently perched on his nose and graying hair; Kylian with laugh lines etched deep around his eyes, grooves of joy worn into his skin by more than a decade of smiling; Ridge with the quiet confidence that comes from years of leadership, standing tall like an oak that has weathered storms; Colter with gruff laughter that was once as rare as summer snow but now fills our halls as naturally as breathing.
“Where's Harper?” I ask, turning in Ridge's arms.
He’s so handsome that the breath is quite literally siphoned straight from my body, leaving me momentarily dizzy.
How is this possible?
How can they all be so insanely—and unfairly—attractive, even all these years later?
Time has been kind to them, carving them into finer versions of themselves, like marble statues gradually revealing their true forms beneath the stone.
“Arguing with the kitchen staff about the cake,” Ridge says, his voice vibrating against my shoulder as he scans the gardens, his eyes alert and shoulders tense even now, even here, even in our own home.
He’s unable to fully shed his role as my protector, the mantle sitting on his shoulders as naturally as his own skin.
None of them are able to.
After all, it’s not just me they’re protecting anymore.
“Something about buttercream versus fondant,” Ridge adds, his nose scrunching in that adorable way he does when he's trying not to laugh. “Her mates are trying to intervene. Poor bastards.”
I smile, picturing it—Harper in full hurricane mode, all thunder and lightning and unstoppable force, her three men attempting to calm the storm with varying degrees of success.
Their story had been its own kind of miracle, a different flavor of impossible than mine. She'd found them during the Nóthos peace talks years ago, and now she runs the kingdom's diplomatic corps with the same ferocity she once applied to keeping me sane during my darkest days.
“She'll win,” I say, certainty ringing in my voice like a bell. “She always wins.”
“Oh look.” Luka stands at my elbow and presses a glass of sparkling cider into my hand—no alcohol for me tonight, not when I'm still nursing our youngest. “Brock's pack just arrived. They're in the west garden.”
I find them through the window—Brock with his dark hair gleaming like raven wings in the afternoon sun, surrounded by his pack and their mate, their children already mingling with mine like streams converging into a river.
He looks up as if feeling my gaze, those sharp eyes finding mine across the distance, and raises his glass in salute.
We don't speak often these days, our lives having diverged down different paths, but there's warmth there. History. The kind of bond forged in crisis that never fully fades, like a brand on the heart.
“And there…” Ridge's arm tightens around me.
I follow his gaze across the lawn to where the Nóthos princes stand with their mate.
Even from here, I can see the way they orbit her like planets around a sun, the way she anchors them, the way they find every excuse possible to touch her, caress her, love her.
The devotion in their posture is palpable even at this distance, a visible force like heat shimmering off summer stone.
God, I still love hearing how they met and came together.
But that's a story for a different time.
“Mom!” Elara's voice echoes from below, closer now, accompanied by the rapid patter of small feet on marble. “Aunt Harper says come cut the cake or she's eating it herself! With her hands!”
“She wouldn’t dare.” I gasp dramatically and press a hand to my mouth, eyes wide. “Not the buttercream!”
Elara giggles, the sound like silver bells, and breaks into a run, her little legs carrying her toward the ballroom door, the frog presumably still in tow.
“Shall we get you your cake, m'lady?” Ridge asks, affecting a ridiculous posh accent that sounds more like a stuffy duke than the fierce warrior he is. He extends his arm with a flourish, bowing slightly. “Before the hurricane consumes it?”
“Why, of course, fine sir.” I mimic his snooty tone, pitching my voice higher, and take his arm, wrapping my fingers around his bicep—solid and strong as iron wrapped in velvet.
Luka moves to stand on my other side, and his hand finds the small of my back. Together, we make our way through halls that have become home.
The ballroom glows with candlelight and joy when we enter, the air thick with the scent of vanilla and sugar and beeswax. The chandeliers drip with crystal like frozen waterfalls, scattering light in all directions.
Teddie stands by the massive cake, Caran at his side with my youngest—Aurora—on his hip, the child playing with the crown that sits slightly askew on Teddie's head.
My brother catches my eye and smiles—that same smile from his coronation day, softened now by time and love and the peace that comes from knowing you are exactly where you're meant to be, like a key finding its lock.
Our children rush to us—Elara with her frog now cupped in careful hands, its throat pulsing with its rapid heartbeat; the twins, Sarabella and Sebastian, arguing about who gets to blow out which candle, their voices overlapping like competing melodies; our oldest, Cassian, trying to look dignified at thirteen and failing magnificently when Kylian ruffles his hair, the boy's composure cracking like thin ice.
“Happy birthday,” Colter grunts, pulling me into his arms.
He’s not wearing his mask.
He hasn’t worn his mask since our son was born thirteen years ago.
The scars on his face—pale rivers of healed tissue that map his survival—only make him look more beautiful to me.
They tell a story of pain endured and overcome, of a man who chose to live rather than hide.
I reach up and trace one with my fingertip, feeling him lean into my touch like a flower turning toward light.
“Happy birthday, my sweet obsession,” Kylian coos, his voice dripping with theatrical adoration.
He wraps his arms around both Colter and me, his warmth pressing against my spine, and begins to kiss the back of my head repeatedly, each press of his lips a punctuation mark of love.
“Mom! Dads! Gross!” Cassian laments, his voice cracking on the edge of puberty, his face screwed up in exaggerated disgust.
Kylian simply laughs, gives me one last kiss that lingers like a promise, and then steps away—probably to tease Cassian mercilessly about his crush on Harper’s omega daughter. We all see the yearning stares he gives her when he thinks no one is looking, the way his ears turn pink when she laughs…
As a boisterous rendition of “Happy Birthday” rises up—voices discordant and joyful and utterly without harmony—my mates surround me, their hands finding my waist, my shoulders, my heart.
Luka's fingers intertwine with mine, Ridge's palm spreads wide against my lower back, Colter's arm anchors me to his side, and Kylian hovers close enough that I can smell the cedar and spice of him.
I look at them—at this life we've built from the wreckage of war and sickness and fear, brick by careful brick, love by stubborn love.
I look at my brother, crowned and content, his family a testament to second chances.
At Harper, finally victorious over the cake—buttercream, I note with a smile—her mates trailing behind her with napkins and infinite patience.
At Brock, raising his glass from across the room, his pack around him.
At the Nóthos princes and their strange, beautiful family, their love as fierce and undeniable as gravity.
Then I look at my children—our children—five impossible dreams made flesh, laughing and living and loving without the weight of what came before. They’re unburdened, free, their futures written in blank pages rather than blood.
The music starts, something soft and sweet, a waltz my mother used to play on rainy afternoons, the notes falling like petals.
Colter takes my hand, his palm calloused and warm.
Ridge takes my other one. Luka and Kylian flank us, and somehow we move together, all of us, a constellation in motion, orbiting the same center of gravity, stepping on each other's toes and laughing as we collide.
We probably look ridiculous and silly and undignified, a tangle of limbs and love spilling across the polished floor…
But…it’s perfect.
They’re perfect.
“I love you,” Colter whispers against my hair, his breath warm and his voice trembling slightly with the weight of the words, as if even now, after all these years, saying it still costs him something—and gives him everything.
I close my eyes and let it wash over me—the warmth of their bodies like a fortress wall, the sound of our children's laughter chiming like church bells, the certainty that this moment, this perfect impossible moment, is real. Not a dream. Not a wish. Real.
“I love you,” I reply, turning my face into Colter's shoulder, feeling Ridge's thumb stroke circles against my palm, feeling Luka's breath against my neck, feeling Kylian's laughter vibrating through all of us. “I love you all, so, so much.”
And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, with a certainty that burns in my chest like an eternal flame, that I finally got my happy ending.
Not the one I expected.
Not the one I planned.
But the one I was always meant to have.