EPILOGUE - Tabitha
One year later…
“Hold still, you little menace,” I mutter, trying to wrangle a tiny orange onesie onto our daughter while she squirms and gurgles at me like this is the best game ever invented.
Amber—named for her golden eyes and the way her hair glows when the sunlight hits her just right—kicks her little legs and nearly takes me out with a surprisingly strong baby foot to the jaw.
“Jasper!” I call out. “A little help here?”
“Busy!” he yells back from the nursery across the hall, where I can hear the boys—Jazz and Onyx—presumably giving him the same treatment.
I manage to get Amber’s onesie on—it has a little fox tail on the back because Bea insisted—and pick her up, cradling her against my chest. She immediately grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks.
“Ow! No. We don’t pull Mommy’s hair. We’ve talked about this.”
She giggles. Actually giggles. At three months old, she’s already a menace, just like her father.
Speaking of whom—Jasper appears in the doorway holding both boys, one in each arm. Jasper Jr.—Jazz for short—is wearing a matching fox onesie, while Onyx is in a tiny cat costume complete with ears.
“They wouldn’t stop crying until I picked them both up,” he says, looking adorably frazzled. His hair is sticking up in all directions, there’s spit-up on his shoulder, and he’s got dark circles under his eyes from approximately zero sleep since the triplets were born.
He’s never looked more attractive.
“Welcome to parenthood,” I say, grinning at him.
“Yeah. But I still can’t believe we literally had a litter. I mean, what the hell? I was joking about that.”
I laugh. “Biology had other ideas.”
“Biology is a dick.”
“Biology gave us three perfect, healthy babies who just happen to have fox and cat DNA running through their veins and therefore think sleep during the night is optional.”
“I love them,” he says quickly. “I love them so much it’s actually painful. But also, I’m so tired I might actually die.”
“You’re a shifter. We heal fast. You’ll survive.”
“Will I though?”
From downstairs, Bea’s voice rings out, “Are my grandbabies ready yet? The parade starts in twenty minutes!”
Jasper and I exchange a look—the same look we’ve been exchanging approximately forty times a day since the triplets were born. The look that says ‘what have we done’ and ‘I wouldn’t trade this for anything’ and ‘please let them sleep tonight’ all at once.
“Coming!” I yell back, grabbing the diaper bag that’s roughly the size of a suitcase.
We make our way downstairs—a production that involves three babies, two shifters, one overstuffed bag, and a concerning amount of coordination. Bea is waiting in the living room, already dressed in her witch costume.
“Oh!” she gasps when she sees us. “Look at them! My little fox-kits and kitten! They’re perfect!”
“They’re demons,” Jasper mutters, but he’s smiling as he says it.
“They’re wonderful,” Bea corrects, immediately swooping in to take Amber from my arms. “Yes you are! Yes you are! Grandma Bea’s precious little Amber!”
Amber, who was screaming ten minutes ago, immediately coos at Bea like she’s never misbehaved a day in her short life.
“How does she do that?” I ask Jasper.
“Magic. Or witchcraft. I’m not ruling anything out at this point.”
Bea has been an absolute godsend since the babies were born.
When I went into labor three months early—terrifying for us, apparently normal for shifter triplets according to the one shifter midwife we managed to find—Bea didn’t even blink.
She just rolled up her sleeves and became the best grandmother three chaos babies could ask for.
She watches them when we work—me at the café three days a week, Jasper doing handyman jobs around town. She rocks them when they cry. She changes diapers without complaint. She makes us meals and reminds us to sleep and tells us we’re doing great even when we feel like we’re drowning.
She’s family. Real family. The kind we chose and who chose us back.
“Now then,” Bea says, settling onto the couch with Amber while Jasper and I wrangle the boys. “Are we ready for our second annual Halloween parade?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” I say.
“Are we wearing costumes this year?” Jasper asks hopefully. “Human costumes?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bea says. “The entire neighborhood is expecting Sox and Whiskers to make an appearance. You can’t disappoint them.”
“We’re married adults with three children,” Jasper protests weakly.
“And?” Bea raises an eyebrow.
He sighs. “And we’re wearing the costumes.”
“I already got them out of storage.” She gestures to the pet costumes lying on the coffee table—the same tuxedo and witch outfit from last year. “They’re tradition now.”
I catch Jasper’s eye and have to suppress a laugh.
A year ago, we were two shifters pretending to be pets, stealing food and framing each other for crimes.
Now we’re married parents of triplets, living openly with Bea, and about to parade around the neighborhood in animal costumes for the second year running.
Life is weird. And perfect.
“Fine,” Jasper says. “But I want it on record that I’m doing this under duress.”
“Noted,” I say, leaning over to kiss him. “You’re very brave.”
“I’m very stupid is what I am.”
“That too.”
We manage to get the babies fed, changed, and loaded into the triple stroller Bea bought—another production that should probably be filmed for a sitcom—before heading out to join the parade.
The neighborhood goes absolutely insane when they see us.
“Oh my god, the fox and cat are back!”
“And the BABIES!”
“Look at the little costumes!”
Children swarm us immediately, cooing over the triplets and petting Sox and Whiskers. Parents pull out phones to take pictures. Mrs. Patterson from two houses down actually tears up.
“Your grandbabies are just adorable,” she tells Bea. “How are the new parents holding up? Having a quiet moment to themselves at home, I’m guessing?”
Bea looks at us conspiratorially before answering. “Oh, they’re busy with a Halloween treat for me. They know how much I love the holiday.”
“Such good kids. You’re lucky to have them.”
Bea beams and glances down at us. “I really am.”
The parade winds through the neighborhood, and by the time we make it back to Bea’s house, all three babies are asleep in their stroller—an actual miracle—and I’m reminded why we do this ridiculous thing.
It’s not about the costumes or the parade or even Halloween, really.
It’s about family. About belonging. About having a place in the world where people know you and love you and expect to see you every year in a tiny witch hat.
Later that night, after trick-or-treating is done and the babies are finally, blessedly asleep in their cribs, Jasper and I collapse into bed.
“We survived,” he says, staring at the ceiling.
“Barely.”
“Do you think they’ll sleep tonight?”
“Absolutely not.”
He laughs, the sound tired but genuine. “This is insane. Our life is completely insane.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t change a single thing.”
“Me neither.”
He rolls over to look at me, propping his head up on his hand. “You know what I was thinking about during the parade?”
“How much you hate the bow tie?”
“Besides that.” He grins. “I was thinking about last year. About how terrified I was. I’d just found you, found this home, and I was so scared I’d lose it all.”
“You didn’t act very scared. You came in here full of cocky bravado, acting like you owned the place.”
“I was faking it. That’s how you survive out there, you know?
You put on a show. Pretend like rejection doesn’t hurt.
Pretend you don’t care if they kick you out or put you down or send you on your way.
But inside I was—” He stops, staring at the ceiling, searching for the word.
“Inside, I was terrified. Not about getting caught. But about being in a place I actually wanted to stay. About having something, someone, worth losing.”
“So much for being the cunning, unbreakable trickster,” I say, reaching over to tangle my fingers with his. “You’re a giant sap, Jasper the fox.”
He grins at me, lazy and unguarded. “Only for you, Tabby-cat. Only for you.”
“Good. Because we’re stuck with each other now. Foxes mate for life. No getting rid of me and our litter of cub-kittens now.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Best thing that ever happened to me.” He leans in and kisses me, and it’s so full of love I think I might just die a little.
And then he’s kissing down the side of my jaw, down my neck, hands already under my shirt. I let out a purr—not the fake, performative one, but the real thing, something primal that’s hard wired into me—and arch into his touch.
“Do we risk it?” I say, though I’m already shoving his boxers down.
“Babies are asleep.” His hands are on my hips, fingers hooking into the waist of my pajamas. “We have a fifteen-minute window at best.”
“Then we’d better hurry.”
We shuck off our clothes while desperately kissing and touching. I’m already slick for him, every part of me, tuned to his body, and when he hauls me onto his lap, and I straddle him, I whimper at the contact, at the way our pieces always slot together like we were engineered for it.
He lines himself up and I sink down on him and the world becomes a pinpoint—his hands tugging my hair, the dull rhythm of our bodies, everything tuned to the frequency of need.
He holds my hips, worships every line of me, and I grind down, eager and greedy, taking him as deep as he’ll go.
My inner walls shudder around him, and his breath breaks in a gasp.
“God, Tabitha—”
“Don’t you dare knot me,” I pant into his mouth. “Not unless you’re ready for litter number two.”
He laughs, but he’s close, I can tell—his knot already swelling, the fox instincts pulling at him the way my feline instincts do at me. I want it. I want all of him, and I want to mark this life as ours, messy and beautiful and completely unplanned.
I clench around him, and he swears, knuckles white against my hips. “You’re evil,” he manages. “You’re going to undo me.”
“That’s the idea,” I say, just as one of the babies starts crying.
“Ignore it,” he begs, voice desperate as he ruts up into me, knot catching at my entrance already.
“Are you insane? If we ignore it, we’ll be stuck together for twenty minutes. Remember last time?”
He grins. “Worth it.”
The wail from down the hall spikes as the other two join in, and I sigh, adrenaline and orgasm colliding in a way that is, against all odds, hilarious.
“Parenthood,” I murmur, sliding off him before we get stuck and grabbing my pajamas.
“There’s always next time,” he promises, grabbing his boxers to join me. But I see the way he looks at me. It’s like he’ll never stop wanting me, not in this lifetime or the next.
We haul ourselves out of bed—again—and make our way to the nursery where three tiny chaos monsters are demanding attention at two in the morning.
And as I pick up Amber and Jasper grabs the boys, I realize something, that I’m not tired at all.
I’m alive in a way I never knew was possible, every cell vibrating with love and exhaustion and the certainty that—against every law of fate and probability—I got exactly what I wanted.
The family I never thought I’d have. The mate I never knew I needed.
And these three howling little miracles that have his eyes and my stubbornness, and probably the genetics to rule some future shifter universe with an iron paw.
A year ago, I was a stray pretending to be a pet, terrified of being found out.
Now I’m a mate, a mother, a daughter.
I’m home. I’m happy. And I wouldn’t change a thing.