Epilogue
brIELLA
Citizen Soldier Playlist
“This Is Your Sign”
“Worth It All”
“If I Surrender”
FOUR YEARS LATER
It’s Halloween.
I stand barefoot in the cool sand, inhaling the scent of salt and pine in one breath.
The wind brushes my curls across my cheek while the October sun slants through the trees lining the rocky outcroppings above, golden and low.
Long shadows dance across the beach. It’s warm for fall, just enough to roll our pants up and dig in the sand without freezing.
Raphael stands beside me, his hand lightly grazing mine, not quite holding it—just close enough to let me know he’s here.
He’s always here.
I smile as Scarlett shrieks with delight, launching a full-scale sneak attack on Rory’s sandcastle.
He gasps like she’s committed treason, then lunges with a roar and scoops her up.
Her red curls whip around as he spins her in wild, laughing circles, her joy louder than the waves. She fiddles with his pendant crest.
I press a hand to my chest, watching them, my heart somehow both aching and overflowing.
A little farther down the beach, Jude is sitting cross-legged in the sand, reading to our almost-three-year-old son, Jasper Vincent. He’s tucked against Jude’s side, their heads tilted toward the same page, his soft golden skin and rich brown curls glinting in the evening sun.
Seth sits in the sand with Atlas, our fifteen-month-old, trying to show him how to play with the wooden dinosaurs he carved—knocking them together, growling dramatically.
But Atlas is far more interested in the sand, his chubby fingers digging in search of seashells or treasures only he can see.
Seth keeps at it anyway, his patience endless, his grin wide and foolish, and I swear I feel my ovaries clench.
Vincent walks the shoreline with Pew Pew on a leash, looking like something out of a quirky seaside noir. His hoodie flaps in the breeze, his eyes drifting now and then toward the horizon like he’s expecting a kraken to emerge from the waves that only he can defeat. And protect us all.
And me? I stand here, wearing a loose royal purple dress with a black corset, perfect for autumn. It’s been a few months since I weaned Atlas, so I have the piercings again.
I can’t seem to drink it all in without drowning.
This beach. These babies. These men. This peace.
I didn’t think I’d live to see it, much less have it.
And even now, part of me keeps waiting for the tide to take it all back.
But Raphael helps most with that. He smells like the forest since he just returned from a week-long hunting venture, still dressed in his black clothes and gear strapped to his back.
And his cap, black this time. I replace it every year.
He would never leave us alone on Halloween.
Raphael turns his head, and his eyes meet mine like he already knows where my thoughts have gone.
He doesn’t say anything, just leans in, brushes his shoulder against mine, and lets me feel it. The warmth. The realness.
Raw. Real. Alive.
I ease a heavy sigh of utter contentment, rest my head on his shoulder, and murmur, “Thank you.”
He doesn’t move. Or respond. But judging by his sharp intake of breath and the flexing of his muscles beneath my head, I know he understands.
“For Level 5,” I finish.
I smile at the strands of his hair wisping across my forehead.
I inhale, taking him in, and inch my hand closer until I touch his wrist. He doesn’t flinch, so I ask, “When did you know?”
I think back to all the milestones. The first night I swung that axe, and he stopped me. The first time he took me in the Initiation. The arrow. The Truth or Dare revelations.
“When did you know I was the girl with the purple hair?” I ask, tilting my chin up, my lungs stripped when I find his tilted down. Our mouths are a thread from one another. And I can feel his warmth on my face.
Silence thickens, and I hold his gaze without shrinking.
Raphael parts his lips. “The moment you bumped into me. And looked up at me. You did the same thing all those years ago in the foster home.”
“Except, I didn’t hug you in the woods,” I point out with a smile.
I love it when the corners of his mouth tug up in that subtle way, proving only I have that effect on him. He is no less beautiful and brutal since that night in the woods. Sculpted and striking features with soul-piercing eyes, he still steals all the air from my lungs and the sanity from my soul.
Lowering his head, Raphael seizes my mouth, commanding me with the power of his jaw, rendering me a prisoner.
The only man who can make me feel like a slave and a queen at the same time.
He anchors his hand at the back of my spine, so I can’t move until I am utterly under his control, his possession.
A fever of lust spreads through me as he devastates me with his tongue and sends my pulse spinning.
Raphael doesn’t love like other men. He can’t.
He consumes.
What he feels for me doesn’t come in words or warmth. It’s obsession, sharpened to a blade’s edge, a blade dancing in flames. It’s not affection. It’s need.
It’s vore. A ravenous, primal instinct to devour what he can never be.
He can’t feel love, but he can feel me.
Other than the others, I am the only thing he’s ever found that he wants to keep. Wants to swallow whole. Wants to break open and crawl inside.
His grip on me strengthens. His energy swarms around me, blacking out everything but this eclipse of a god.
A low groan resonates through me, and I open my mouth more for him. Here, on the edge of the ocean, on the edge of everything the chains hold, I let him take whatever he wants from me.
Loving Raphael is like offering yourself to a monster with perfect teeth, knowing he’ll bite down and reopen the scars inside—but trusting he’ll never finish the meal.
Because he can’t.
Because he needs me alive, suffering and shining, so he can go on breathing.
The chess brand testifies I’m their Queen, who has conquered them.
But I wear his scar, the arrow scar, like a crown—bold, visible, proud.
A mark that proclaims: I walked into the jaws of the beast, and he chose to keep me, not consume me.
But it still left me with a limp. Jude was right. I’ll never truly walk again.
And every time he touches me, I feel the edge of it. Because I am the only thing strong enough to survive his hunger and still hold his soul in my hand.
So, when he pauses above my lips, I am close to sinking to my knees until he utters, “Thank you, Briella.”
“For what?” My lower lip trembles.
“For Level 6.”
I’m confused. We’ve never discussed other levels. “What is Level 6?”
He doesn’t retreat. He hovers here, studying my every expression.
Then, it dawns on me. And I beam. “The arrow.”
He doesn’t nod, but his gleaming eyes confirm everything. The sun is halfway down the horizon, and the more the shadows grow, the more he seems to gather them to himself. A menacing hunger overcomes him. I don’t just see it. I feel it.
“And now, for Level 7.”
My pulse stutters. “What’s Level 7?”
With a slow, dangerous smile, Raphael removes the cap from his head, sets it on my head, and says in the silky purr of a predator, “It means run, my Queen.” He gestures to the forest behind us. His hunting grounds.
“Raphael, I can’t—”
“Run,” he growls.
My heart stalls in my chest as he licks the side of my throat—slow, savoring, like he’s already tasting the victory of the hunt. But it’s not fear that blooms inside me this time.
It’s reverence.
Because the hunger isn’t just in them—it’s in me, too. And it always has been. I am something sacred, reborn on their altar of pain and worship. I am divine.
So, I run.
Not fast. Not well. I limp, using the cane, dragging the leg that never healed—into the woods, into the dusk, into his domain. My lungs burn, my skin tears on thorns, but my smile carves itself across my face.
Because I want him to catch me. Because I want to be consumed. Not by death.
By him.
I never thought I’d be the girl running through a forest on Halloween night, hunted by an unhinged monster.
But here I am.
When Raphael crashes through the trees behind me like a shadow born of the wild and war, when he lifts me off my feet and pins me to the mossy earth with his weight, his teeth grazing my throat, I don’t scream.
I whisper, “Eat your heart out, my King.”
And he does.
The forest swallows the sound.
The monsters wear my name like a prayer.
I wear their chains like a crown.
The Queen of the Damned does not run.
She reigns.
THE END