Epilogue
SHYANNE
One Year Later
Igripped the wheel with both hands, doing my best to stay awake as we drove.
Jackson sat beside me, looking at the items on his lap. The bandanna spread over his legs held several broken and shattered slivers of moonstone—one from each of the orbs we’d destroyed over the last ten months.
“Is it really over?” I said, shooting him a glance. “We’re done?”
Tearing his eyes away, he glanced at me and smiled. “That was the last one.”
His voice was thick with weariness, but also hope and relief.
When we’d set out for Japan last year, I’d known it would be rough and that things would be difficult, but I’d never imagined how far we’d have to go, and what we’d need to do in order to save all of Jackson’s people.
Over the course of ten months, I’d become fully initiated into the strange magical world that Jackson and his kind lived in.
I’d seen things that most humans only ever read in books or saw in movies.
A bracelet of carved wooden beads on a thin leather string rattled on my wrist. Jackson pointed at it and smiled.
“You really like that thing. You haven’t taken it off in months,” he said as I took the exit that would take us home.
I shrugged. “It’s not every day you get a gift from a fox shifter.”
A man named Ryo Hayakawa had gifted me the bracelet after we’d destroyed the orb we found in Japan.
He’d been our main contact and our source of intel for that mission.
Without him, we probably wouldn’t have made it out alive.
Honestly, we should have given him a gift rather than vice versa, but he was so happy to have that crime lord out of his neighborhood that he wouldn’t take no for an answer when he offered the gift.
“I’m not sure that it really has any magical protection, though,” I said, giving Jackson a sidelong glance. “If it did, I probably wouldn’t have had to get stitches when we were in Spain.”
Jackson’s face clouded, and he gently wrapped up the orb slivers, then set them gingerly on the floorboard.
“I don’t want to think about that,” he said.
The closest I’d come to truly getting hurt or killed in all of our travels was when we went after the third orb. It had been in a secure vault of what had once been a bank, but had been turned into a luxury home by a corrupt drake businessman.
“I’m fine now,” I said, though the memory of the blood and agony I’d experienced when that bastard had slashed me still haunted my dreams. He’d cut me right down to the bone.
I thought I’d seen Jackson enraged before.
I thought there was no way he could be more terrifying or powerful than when he’d fought Joseph.
I had been wrong. Even as I’d lain there on the marble floor, bleeding freely, I’d been shocked by the pure destruction he’d wrought against those men when they hurt me.
Within two minutes, he’d killed them all and shattered the stone.
We’d brought along my trusty wrench since it had done a good job the first time.
Once that was done, he’d hurried me to a magical healer.
The lady had staunched the blood flow, healed most of the wounds, and given me stitches using some type of magically enhanced dissolving thread.
Now? There was the faintest set of three scars running down my back, and no pain.
But Jackson still got angry when it was mentioned.
“Do you want me to drive?” Jackson offered. “Or we could stop now, and I could fly us the rest of the way home.”
“Absolutely not,” I said, patting the steering wheel. “We got this fair and square, and I’m taking it home. It’ll be my little gift for saving your ass over the last year.”
He snorted a laugh and put his hand on my thigh. “Fair enough. But let the record show I offered.”
The car was a mint-condition nineteen-sixty-seven Shelby Mustang GT500.
A car I’d fallen in love with at nine years old when I’d watched Gone in Sixty Seconds the first time with Dad.
When we’d found it in the garage of that bastard drug kingpin in Toronto, I’d told Jackson I had to have it.
The guy was dead, which meant he wouldn’t miss it.
He’d agreed, and that was what we’d driven home in.
All the way from Toronto to Houston. He’d had to make a few calls to get me some fake temporary documentation saying it belonged to me.
It was amazing what you could get when money wasn’t an issue.
After four days of driving, we were almost home.
My heart ached to see my father. In all the months we’d been hunting orbs, I’d only seen him once.
After we’d destroyed an orb in South Africa with the help of a friendly family of wyrm shifters, we’d returned so I could spend Christmas with him, and Jackson got to see Jacqueline’s first Christmas morning.
Dad looked healthier than he ever had—as strong and powerful as he had been in his younger days.
He’d even started jogging, for God’s sake.
He and Cassandra ran three-to-five miles a day.
In the months I’d been gone, they’d grown closer, and Dad now knew the truth, which meant I didn’t have to keep things hidden from him anymore.
Cassandra had told him after their relationship became more serious.
That was a hell of a relief. Apparently, he’d taken it better than she’d expected.
“I knew that boy of yours was special,” he’d told me over Christmas dinner. “I just didn’t think he was that kind of special.”
“Okay,” Jackson said, relaxing into his seat for the last ten miles of the drive. “What was your favorite part?”
“What do you mean?” I said with a smirk. “Am I choosing between the almost dying, or the…uh…almost dying?”
“No need to be a smart-ass,” Jackson said, grinning back at me. “It was dangerous, sure, but you still got to see the world. Was there anything that you thought was the best?”
My mind drifted back over everything I’d seen.
There were the normal things, sure. I got to see the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, Hudson Bay—but those were places and things any human could see.
Instead, I thought back on the wonders I’d witnessed.
A pegasus swooping low over a field of flowers outside Germany to land and shift into a human woman with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen in my life.
There’d been that moment Jackson had pointed out the window of a train car to show me some strange snake-like creature rising out of a lake that he’d told me was the basis for the Loch Ness Monster myths.
But the most awe-inspiring thing had come when we’d been off the coast of Africa on an old oil rig that had been transformed into a base of operations for a drake that specialized in human trafficking.
That had been where one of the orbs was located.
We’d flown onto the rig during a massive storm.
The sea undulated with huge waves as wind slapped back and forth with sheets of rain.
Lightning shattered the sky every few seconds.
It was during one of those bright flashes that I’d gazed out into the ocean to see the most terrifying and awe-inspiring sight of my life.
“The kraken,” I said simply. “That’s probably a highlight.”
“Really?” Jackson said sarcastically. “Can’t imagine why.”
For me, it had been pure ontological shock to see that massive thing rise from the ocean.
Huge, two-hundred-foot long tentacles waving through the air, and gigantic black eyes zeroing in on me.
Larger than any whale—hell, larger than any living creature on Earth.
It had been like witnessing some ancient and unknowable god erupting from the ocean waves. It was cool as hell.
“Nope,” I said. “Nothing can top that. I doubt anything ever will.”
Jackson pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped out a message.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked, sparing a glance from the road.
“Nobody,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
He said the words with a straight face, but I could hear the hint of a smile in his words. I frowned, but left it alone. I was too tired to worry about what kind of goofy message Christian had probably sent to make him laugh.
Christian’s parents and brother had forgiven Jackson and me for what we’d done, which was good. They were great people, and I hoped to get to know them better now that we’d be home for good.
A strange, nervous excitement filled me as we turned onto the road that led to Jackson’s house.
The sun angled down toward the horizon, but light still played across the pine trees of the surrounding forest. It gave the whole world a weird, surreal orange glow.
After so long away, it really did feel like coming home.
“How’s the garage?” Jackson said. “I haven’t asked how things are going the last few weeks.”
“As far as I can tell, it’s fine,” I said. “Dad tells me business has really picked up, and he’s been able to offer all the part-time guys we had full-time hours.”
“Holy hell, that’s amazing,” Jackson said, straightening in his seat.
“Yeah. Well, your father contracted Dad to do all the maintenance work on his cars as well as all the company vehicles you guys have for your businesses. That’s huge.” I looked over at him and winked. “It helps when all your bills are paid off too. Thanks for that again, by the way.”
“No thanks needed. I pay my debts,” he said.
“You do. Oh, Dad also said your father has invited all the garage staff up for a weekly dinner the last few months. I think your dad is trying to find some way of repaying me, and since I haven’t been there, he’s using my dad as a surrogate,” I said with a laugh.
“Speaking of home,” Jackson said, and pointed out the gate that led to his mansion. “Looks like we’re finally here.”
I heaved a sigh of weary relief and pulled in, shifting down and cruising up the long driveway to the house.
“It doesn’t feel real to be back,” I said as I parked the car.