Epilogue #3
“I was trying not to stay over too much in case I was annoying you,” I managed to get out, thinking about all those nights back in my own bed. Lying there feeling sad and incomplete, staring at the ceiling for hours, struggling to fall asleep without Teddy’s steady breathing beside me.
Teddy tutted, shaking his head. “If you wanted to, you could have stayed over every single night. But anyway, let’s do it. Move in properly. From tonight.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Teddy’s hand came up, fingertips brushing along my jaw like he was memorising the shape of it.
Then his fingers found the hoops in my ear, turning them slowly, absently, like he needed something to fidget with.
“As long as Freddy continues to live at Killigrew Street. I don’t want to have to install a lock on my fridge. ”
I pouted at him. “I can’t control where Freddy goes. If he happens to follow me home one time…”
“Rory.”
“Huh?”
“So is this a yes?”
“Is that even a question? Of course I want to live with you.” The grin that split my face felt like it might crack my skull in half. “But just so you know, I don’t believe in individual toothbrushes.”
“What?”
“Like, having your own toothbrush and stuff.”
Teddy groaned, tipping his head back towards the sky. “Why do I love you?”
Those words. I’d never get bored of hearing them, how they made all the colours of the world brighter, sharper, more vivid.
“It’s truly a mystery,” I said, but even as the joke left my mouth, a tiny sharp fragment of panic sliced through me. What if Teddy hated living with me? What if it ruined what we had, which was pretty damn wonderful. Pretty damn perfect.
“Stop that,” Teddy said firmly, cupping my face in his hands.
He kissed me then, soft and sure, before pulling me against his chest. His arms wrapped around me, rocking us gently whilst I pressed my ear to his heartbeat.
Raindrops on summer pavement enveloped us, woven into the very fabric of our bond.
The steady rhythm of his heart calmed the frantic buzzing in my head, chasing away the worry like sunlight burning off morning fog.
“I’ll move all my stuff tomorrow,” I said, still grinning like a complete idiot. The key felt warm in my palm, like it was already part of me.
“Half your clothes are at mine already,” Teddy pointed out, smirking.
“Um… I hate to tell you this, but that is not half of my clothes. Maybe, like, five percent?”
Teddy’s eyes widened, genuine alarm flickering across his face. “Five percent?”
“Maybe seven? At a push?”
He groaned, though he was fighting a smile. “What have I gotten myself into?”
“But anyway, Kit is going to be so happy I’m out of his flat!” I joked, though I wasn’t completely convinced. Kit had gotten used to having me around, hadn’t he? Though it wasn’t like I was moving to Mars—I could still pop round to annoy him whenever I wanted. Which would be often. Daily, probably.
“Yeah, well, he’ll want someone else in there with him at some point,” Teddy said.
Before I could ask what he meant by that, Felix appeared at the end of the path. He raised his hand in an awkward wave.
“Kit is inside wondering where you are,” Teddy said as he reached us.
“Umm, okay…” Felix said, giving him a strange look.
When he was through the door, Teddy laughed—a proper belly laugh that made his shoulders shake. I felt like I was missing something important, some sort of joke perhaps, but then Teddy pressed a kiss to the top of my head and suddenly I couldn’t remember what I’d been wondering about.
His lips lingered against my hair, warm and soft, and our bond pulsed gently, contentment flowing through it like honey.
“Come on, then,” he murmured against my scalp. “Let’s go tell everyone the news. Though I suspect Priya already knows—she read my leaves yesterday.”
“Huh. That explains her cryptic text to me last night.”
Before I could respond, Priya appeared in the doorway, her face unusually serious.
I said, “So this is what you meant when you said—”
“Yes, yes, it’s all very sickeningly romantic and I’m very happy for you,” Priya cut me off, waving her hand dismissively. “But come back inside. Something’s happened.”
The happy bubble around Teddy and me popped instantly, my stomach dropping like a stone. Teddy’s hand found mine, fingers intertwining as we exchanged a look that said everything—here we go again.
“What kind of something?” Teddy asked, slipping straight back into detective mode, shoulders squared.
We followed Priya back through the pub, weaving between tables packed with after-work drinkers. The cheerful chatter and clinking glasses felt suddenly muffled, like we were moving through water.
Kit looked up as we approached, his face pale.
Seb sat ramrod straight, mobile pressed to his ear, speaking in rapid Spanish as Flynn studied him, expression grave.
Felix was hunched over his laptop that looked extremely out of place in the pub, fingers flying across the keys with even more urgency than usual.
I threw myself onto the stool. “What’s going on?” I asked, though part of me didn’t want to know. I just wanted to live with my boyfriend and argue about toothbrushes and whether it was appropriate to throw Freddy an unbirthday party in our flat. I wanted ordinary problems.
Seb ended his call and placed his phone face down on the table with deliberate precision. When he looked up, his dark eyes held that particular weight that meant our world was about to shift again.
“Felix received an encrypted message a few minutes ago,” Seb declared. “From someone claiming to know the location of surviving GREY facilities.”
My blood turned to ice water. “And?”
“The message included coordinates,” Felix said without looking up from his screen. “And a list of names. Shifters who are supposedly under GREY control.”
“And?” I repeated. Teddy, standing behind me, squeezed my shoulder.
Seb looked at me.
He looked at Kit.
“Your father’s name is on it.”
The End