Epilogue
Alexander & Andie
Two weeks later
The apple orchard spread out below the terrace in orderly rows, the fruit heavy and late-season red.
The altar of Hera stood at the far end beneath a canopy of white linen that the priestesses had raised at dawn.
The morning sun hit the stone and turned it the color of warm honey.
House Hera’s insignia had been carved into the lintel centuries before I was born, and the purple-gold paint in its grooves was fresh.
It was strange to be back here, after everything that had happened. But against all odds, we were on Samos, and this time, not because Andie was ill.
Nikos stood beside me, adjusting his cufflinks for the fourth time. My brother was uncomfortable in formal clothes. He preferred the operational anonymity of dark suits and earpieces. The white linen shirt Helena had insisted on made him look like a man attending someone else’s wedding by accident.
“Stop fidgeting,” I told him, straightening my own collar.
“Stop watching me fidget.” He gave up on the cufflinks and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’d think after everything we’ve been through, a bonding ceremony would be the easy part.”
It should have been. But the Heraion carried its own weight now.
Every corridor held a memory I would rather have burned.
Andie screaming when the collar failed. Cassandra’s fire forcing her into unconsciousness while my father dragged me backward by the shoulders.
The orchard where I’d pinned her down in the grass while the curse twisted everything between us into poison.
The flight I’d put her on, only for her to jump out at thirty thousand feet.
This island had been a prison for both of us. Today it was supposed to become something else.
Elias and Robert were already seated near the altar.
They still didn’t like me. Two weeks hadn’t changed that.
But Robert had shaken my hand when he arrived, and he’d held my gaze for three full seconds before letting go.
Elias no longer seemed inclined to tear my throat out or sic House Hermes onto me, which was always a plus.
Danae Wayland sat by their side, looking a little nervous but determined. Andie told me Helena threw her off Samos when she tried to fight our decision to accept Damon Blackwood’s offer. I was grateful to her for standing up for Andie to the end.
My father had come. That surprised me more than anything else about this day.
Argos Stormwright leaned against the far wall of the terrace with his arms crossed.
He was watching the preparations with the detached interest of a man evaluating a military exercise.
He hadn’t spoken to me since he’d arrived.
He didn’t need to. His presence was the statement.
I’d spent my entire life wanting his approval and resenting myself for wanting it. Today I’d settle for his attendance.
Helena emerged from the interior of the Heraion.
She wore the full ceremonial regalia of a House Hera matriarch, her deep purple robes edged in gold thread.
Her silver-streaked dark hair was pinned beneath a crown of woven metal engraved with peacocks.
She cradled a bonding chalice in her hands, carrying it with a sternness that for once didn’t feel like a threat.
She stopped in front of me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her hands on the chalice were steady. “Alexander. I want you to know that I am glad you’re here. Despite everything.”
“Despite everything,” I echoed. She had been my biggest ally in my fight to save Andie, and perhaps the only one who understood the true extent of what we’d gone through. “I’m glad too, Helena.”
She inclined her head once. Then she turned toward the altar and began arranging the ceremonial elements.
Andie appeared at the far end of the terrace.
My chest locked. Every thought in my head dissolved in the span of a single heartbeat. She wore a simple white dress, nothing ceremonial, nothing elaborate. Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders. Her feet were bare on the warm stone.
She was walking toward me, and there was no curse between us.
The possessiveness hit me like a fist beneath the sternum. Mine. My Omega. My hands shook at my sides. My teeth ached. Every nerve in my body demanded that I close the distance between us. I wanted nothing more than to put my mouth on her bonding gland and bite.
I didn’t move. Instead, I stood there and let her come to me. That was what she deserved. She had earned the right to walk this distance on her own terms.
The moment she reached me, her eyes found mine. The corner of her mouth curved upward. The expression was so free of fear, so entirely Andie, that my vision blurred.
“You’re shaking.” She took my hand. Her fingers were warm, dry, and impossibly steady.
“I’m aware.” I tightened my grip on her hand and pressed my thumb against her pulse point. Her heartbeat was calm. Mine was not.
Helena approached with the chalice. The ceremony itself was quieter than I’d expected. There were no oaths of obedience, no declarations of ownership. House Hera’s bonding rite was a formal blessing of something that already existed between two people.
“A bond is not a tether,” Helena began, her voice carrying across the quiet terrace in a cadence that belonged to another century. “It is not a brand to mark what is owned. House Hera does not forge chains. We bless the foundation upon which two souls choose to build.”
She dipped her fingers into the oil and stepped closer.
“You have walked through the dark. You have survived the poison, and you have survived the fall.” Her eyes moved from Andie to me, acknowledging the brutal path that had led us here.
“Where there was a curse, let there be sanctuary. Let the storm bring rain to nourish the earth, and let the earth give the lightning a place to ground.”
Helena anointed our joined hands with oil from the chalice. “May the Mother grant you the peace you fought so fiercely to earn. I bless what is already true. I honor what cannot be broken.”
Purple-gold light bloomed from her fingertips, gentle and warm. It was nothing like the devastating power she’d used to sever Damon’s bond or the raw force Andie had unleashed on the yacht.
Across from me, Robert pressed his face against Elias’s shoulder. Elias put his arm around him and held on. Danae watched us, smiling, her eyes bright and fixed on her best friend. Nikos had stopped fidgeting. Even Argos had uncrossed his arms.
Helena placed her hands over ours and spoke the final blessing. Her composure held until the last word. Then a single tear tracked down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and stepped back. The ceremony was done.
Andie turned to me. The light still lingered at our joined hands, fading slowly into the morning air. She was so beautiful it hurt. “You trusted me,” I told her. “Even when you had no reason to, you still believed.”
I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since the day of the fight with Orion. Even knowing Orion was a threat to me on the water, she’d still trusted me to hold my own. To buy her time to act. It was the greatest gift she could have ever given me.
She smiled, and her thumb pressed against my knuckles, deliberate and slow. “How could I not? You’re my Alpha.”
My blood answered before my mind could form a response. Every instinct I’d spent two weeks holding in check surged against my ribs. The promise in that single word was enough to make my vision narrow to the woman in front of me and nothing else.
“I am yours,” I agreed. “Just like you are mine.”
The sun climbed above the Heraion. The orchard swayed in the salt breeze. And for the first time since the night I’d caught her scent on the deck of the Odyssey, I did not have to pretend that wanting her was something I could control.
The room they’d given us was on the upper floor of the Heraion, overlooking the orchard. In a silent display of tact, my mother had moved us from the quarters I’d used during my captivity.
A part of me couldn’t help but be amused. Tonight, I wouldn’t have minded any kind of room or bed.
Tonight the sheets were fresh, the windows were open, and the man standing in the doorway was mine by choice.
Alexander closed the door behind him. The latch clicked, and the sound was impossibly loud in the silence between us. He’d taken off his jacket somewhere between the terrace and here. His shirt was open at the collar, revealing the scars on his chest.
He’d told me all about the ritual he’d undergone at Maracaibo. The memory still made me shudder. But I was profoundly thankful for the power of the Storm. It had kept him safe throughout Orion’s attack and protected him while I went through with my plan.
He didn’t move from the door. His hands were at his sides, fingers slightly curled. His breathing had gone shallow. He was almost vibrating with restraint.
Two weeks of waiting. Two weeks of careful distance, of sleeping in separate rooms, of not touching each other beyond the occasional brush of fingers. We’d both needed to let things settle, to know that when we actually did touch, it would be real.
It was real now.
I crossed the room to him. I put my hands flat against his chest, and his muscles contracted under my palms. His heartbeat was wild. The storm-scent of him filled my lungs. My body responded with a heat that went far deeper than mere biology.
“You’ve been patient.” I slid my palms up to his shoulders and pushed his shirt back. The fabric caught at his elbows before he shrugged it free. “You don’t have to. Not anymore.”
His hands found my waist. The grip was careful, his fingers pressing into the fabric of my dress with striking gentleness. I appreciated it, but at the same time, I didn’t need it. “You won’t break me, Alexander.”
Just like that, the dam holding his desire at bay collapsed. The static of his scent flared, a dark, heavy blanket of Alpha pheromones that instantly commanded the space.