Epilogue
PENNY
ONE YEAR LATER
“Brax, put me down!” I laugh as he carries me in his arms up the hill at the back of our property.
“No.”
I roll my eyes, but internally I love that he’s still super protective and always wanting to touch me. “I might not even be pregnant, and even if I am, it’s good for me to walk.”
“I don’t care, I want to hold you.”
“Okay, yeti.”
“Not a yeti,” he grumbles.
I pat his chest as I placate him. “Sure, sure.”
When we reach the top of the hill, he places me on my feet under the large oak tree and we turn back to survey our home. It’s taken us a while, and we still aren’t done yet, but we are making a real home here in Maplewick.
Playful barking has me looking down to where my dog, Blue, is running up the hill towards us, making me smile wide.
As soon as our home was built, Ryker surprised me with the tiny puppy as a present.
He had deep blue eyes, and I immediately named him Blue, my original nickname for Ryker.
I couldn’t believe he’d remember that day we spent in the market where I’d first seen this realms version of a puppy, which looked similar to a tiger cub with orange and black stripes but with the body of a dog.
I pet his head before he runs back towards our home. The base of our house looks like a stone bungalow. After I explained what a wrap-around porch was, my men were able to build an amazing one surrounding the entire home. They even added a large gazebo with a table so we can eat outside.
The home is open concept with a large eat-in kitchen and a living room with plenty of seating and a stone fireplace. The master bedroom is extra big, with room for all the men’s clothing, as well as mine.
The only other occupied bedroom belongs to our two-month-old twin girls, Fire and Ice, as I liked to call them, due to Scarlet having red hair like mine and Lily having bright blonde hair.
Ryker is my only blonde mate, but Apollo said he and Indy had blonde hair as babies and it turned brown as they aged, so there was no clear indication of who their father was.
Especially since they were the spitting image of me, it was impossible to tell.
When I had finally started to show signs of being pregnant, all my men had been ecstatic, as had I.
Luckily, I was able to speak with Ria not too long after and she gave me some advice on having a baby in this world.
But even though I had two, the fact that I have six mates made everything so much easier.
Spreading the work and midnight feedings meant we were, mostly, getting enough sleep.
The surprising part for me was learning that having a daughter first, like Ria had, was completely unheard of.
Not just rare, but apparently it just didn’t happen.
Multiple boys always superseded a female birth.
So when I gave birth to not one, but two baby girls, everyone was completely shocked.
We assume it had to be something about us being from another realm.
Whatever the reason, it just made Scarlet and Lily that much more special to us.
From the rise where we’re standing, I can see Apollo and Silver laying on a blanket with the babies, playing with them gently.
They have all been incredible with the girls, it warms my heart every time I see them together.
Those two in particular have decided to make it their full-time job to take care of our children, and me.
As has Brax. I think it’s overkill, but they assure me that I’ll be thankful for it, especially when we have more children.
It wasn’t like they needed to work anyway, and I was more than happy to have them around all the time.
A squawk brings my attention to the aviary where Ryker is.
He’s been raising two small skyreachers who lost their mother.
I can see him in there now, feeding them, and it brings a smile to my face.
It was nice to see that people in this village not only knew him, but seemed to genuinely like him.
I mean, I knew he was amazing, that’s why I married him, but I worried people would judge him like his parents had since he grew up here.
But it’s become obvious to me that his parents left because they were the odd ones here, not Ryker.
A loud noise has us turning our heads to the large workshop my guys had built. “Looks like Drake’s starting on a new project,” Brax says as we watch him drag a downed tree into the workshop.
Drake gave up his life as an assassin and has spent a lot of his time using his blades to create wooden furniture for our home.
After a few broken chairs, he’s become incredibly good at it.
He’s even started doing commissioned pieces for some of our new friends in the village.
It didn’t change his personality, though.
He still looked at me with those intense, dark eyes, reminding me of what he was capable of.
His intensity in the bedroom didn’t change either, if anything, he’s become more intense, bringing me to tears on more than one occasion from the heat he wrings from my body.
“What are you thinking about right now, Baby?” Brax whispers in my ear, making me turn to him in surprise.
“What?”
“You’re blushing like crazy right now, what dirty thing were you thinking about?” he asks as he pulls my back against his chest, his arms circling me as he rests his chin on my head.
“Oh, nothing specific, just how lucky I am to have all of you in my life.”
“Hmm… so this has nothing to do with the state I just found you in, in the stables?” My cheeks heat even more at the memory of Brax finding me in the stable with Indy a few minutes ago.
My eyes dart to the eastern side of our property where our large stable sits.
It’s big enough to hold twenty horses, although we still only have the six we arrived in Maplewick with.
Indy is getting to know them and deciding if he should try breeding them or not.
I think he’s worried about taking on too much right now, as requests for horse training have started coming in as people learn about his talents.
I like to watch all my men doing things they love, it fills me with so much happiness and warmth to see them so relaxed.
So when I went to visit Indy earlier and found him shoveling hay in one of the stalls, shirtless, with his arm muscles bulging, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at him with so much heat my panties almost set on fire.
The moment he saw that look in my eyes, he had my skirt up and panties down as he took me against the wall.
Brax had wandered in and watched while Indy pulled two orgasms from me in no time at all.
I was used to having sex in front of all of them now.
I knew there was no jealousy, and they constantly reminded me that they loved watching me in pleasure, even if they weren’t the ones doing it.
But sometimes I still felt inadequate or insecure, being six of them and only one of me.
I turn in his arms to look up at his handsome face. “Brax, you know I love you, right?”
“Of course I do. I love you too, Baby,” he says, cupping my face gently before giving me a gentle kiss. “What’s on your mind? Are you thinking about Ria?”
Ria was eight months pregnant with her second child and I really wanted to be there for her, but she assured me she had her three mates and had already survived one birth just fine.
She wanted me to visit after the baby was born, but I couldn’t help but worry.
I wanted her to stay with us through the birth and recovery period.
But with so many husbands and babies, getting together was always a chaotic, yet fun, time.
We’d seen each other twice since moving to Maplewick, and it was great, but exhausting.
I think we were both settled with our own families, and that was fine. But I’d always worry about her.
“I’m always going to worry about her, but I know she has Bazz, Calix and Huxley to help take care of her and the babies, she’ll be fine.”
“She will be. And so will you. You know that now, right, Penny? The six of us are always going to be here to take care of you and our children.”
“I know, Brax,” I tell him, looping my arms around his giant frame.
He was still huge, and I loved his size.
Apollo was my next biggest mate and the two of them have become close.
I think because they both spent many years in isolation, feeling rejected by society, they could relate to each other easier than the rest. And when the two of them decided to take me together, as they had last night, I was done for.
They were my biggest mates but somehow the most caring and gentle, like giant teddy bears.
I loved being sandwiched between the two of them, it made me feel so safe and precious.
It was the two of them, more than anything else, that had helped calm my constant need for adventure.
Part of me wonders if I was only ever doing those crazy things to cover my emotions from losing my family and my fear of abandonment.
I may never know, but what I did know is that I am happy here, with my mates in my new world.
I watch as Silver stands from where he’s been laying with Apollo, Scarlet and Lily, and heads towards us.
When we first arrived here, Silver was rather tightlipped about his past, never mentioning it.
When I finally dragged out of him that he felt ashamed of it, I felt terrible that I hadn’t done more to reassure him that I loved every part of him.
The fact that he used to be a pirate was hot.
And I took every chance I got to tell him that now.