Epilogue
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JASPER WAS HAVING A nice evening. He and Archie were at Archie’s apartment, relaxed. Their stomachs were full of food Archie had cooked, and even after everything that had happened, Jasper somehow managed to feel at peace with the world.
He didn’t think his father had ever loved him, and that was okay.
He could have left Jasper to die or killed him, but instead, he’d taken him in.
Jasper still didn’t know if Leroy had killed his parents to get to him, or hell, if he’d been the one to kill his parents, and he wasn’t sure he would ever find out, but he decided it wasn’t something he could allow himself to obsess over.
That way lay madness, and he had too much to focus on, especially the monster stretched out on the chair on the balcony next to him.
Archie was holding Jasper’s hand and stroking his knuckles.
They were both staring at the sky and the stars, and it was peaceful in a way that Jasper wasn’t sure he’d ever felt.
The rest of his life was chaos, but here, he could breathe.
With Archie, he could be himself, no matter who he was—human, monster, or a bit of both.
But he still had a lot of questions. He still didn’t know much about his birth parents and what had happened to them. Maybe he’d find out, and maybe he wouldn’t. Only the future would tell.
“You know, there’s something that’s been bothering me,” Archie said suddenly, looking away from the sky.
“What?”
Archie sat up and turned to face Jasper. He didn’t let go of his hand, squeezing it instead. “Did Kester know I was having him followed when he went to the sanctuary to find those documents? How did he know about them? What did he take from the box?”
Jasper groaned. “Do we really have to talk about it right now?”
“We don’t. If you want, we can stop talking entirely.”
But the peace Jasper had been feeling evaporated.
It could only be there if he ignored the problems he was leaving outside the door of Archie’s apartment, and Archie had just ushered them back in.
Jasper supposed that the two of them would have a chance at peace once this mess was over, but for now, it was far from it.
He also straightened in his chair. “I don’t know what Kester wanted from those documents or how he knew about them, but it’s clear that he’s somehow linked to the sanctuary and the people who died there. He wouldn’t have known they were there otherwise.”
“And why did he lead us to them?”
“Maybe he didn’t know you were having him followed.”
Archie snorted. “Do we really believe that?”
“Not really.” They didn’t know Kester that well, but he was the kind of person who always knew what was going on. It was what made him so dangerous.
Well, that and the fact that he never hesitated to kill, even without a reason.
“Do you think Kester was involved in what my parents were building?” Jasper murmured. “They wanted humans and monsters to be able to live together. What does that have to do with Kester?”
“Well, it was twenty years ago. Everyone changes in twenty years, and maybe he changed for the worse.”
“You don’t think he was a killer twenty years ago?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was in love with a human and was involved with the sanctuary because of that.”
It was hard to imagine Kester being in love with anyone. “Cullen is too young to have been conceived when the sanctuary was destroyed, isn’t he?”
“He is. We don’t know if he’s Kester’s only child, though.”
“I don’t think we’re going to find out how Kester was involved unless he wants to tell us. As far as I know, he’s not mentioned in the documents we found.”
“Maybe Emric can tell us more.”
Jasper hadn’t heard from Emric again, but he knew the man was around.
He was just waiting for Emric to reach out to him.
As desperate as he was for answers and even Emric’s friendship, Jasper realized that Emric had much more to lose than he did.
Jasper didn’t have any memories of his past life or his biological parents.
He didn’t have any memories of Emric. He didn’t know what he’d lost, but Emric did.
Maybe seeing Jasper would hurt him too much.
Maybe that was why he was staying away, or maybe he just didn’t trust Jasper yet.
Jasper couldn’t blame him. They might have played together as children, but Jasper had been a hunter for many years.
He’d been raised within the organization.
He was half monster himself, like Emric, but he hadn’t known until recently.
It would be odd if Emric already trusted him.
Jasper could only continue to be the man he always was.
He and Archie would continue investigating the documents they’d found in the box from the sanctuary, and hopefully, they’d eventually find out what had really happened that night.
They already had several names, and not everyone was dead.
Of course, they were hunters, so they would probably refuse to talk to them, which meant they’d have to find answers in a different way.
They couldn’t ask questions, but they could investigate, and thankfully, Archie was quite good at that.
Jasper squeezed Archie’s hand. “I love you.”
Archie blinked. He was always beautiful, but in the nightlight, his green hair looked almost black, and his golden eyes glowed faintly.
Watching him like this made Jasper want to crawl into his lap, but he was pretty sure it would destroy the chair Archie was sitting on if he tried that.
Instead, he reached out to stroke a finger down one of Archie’s antlers.
He grinned when Archie shuddered. Jasper knew what he was doing, and he knew that Archie knew, too.
“I love you too,” Archie said.
“I’m glad you’re in this with me. I know it would’ve been much easier for you to take a step back when all of this mess came out, but you didn’t. You’re still here with me.”
“That’s not going to change. When I fell in love with you, I also fell in love with your messes. I fell in love with your past and your future. Whatever happens next, we’ll face it together.”
Jasper was pretty sure that was the only reason he would survive it.
He was pretty sure that Archie was the only reason he’d survived finding out that he wasn’t fully human.
He had Corey and Kerry, and they loved him, of course, but it wasn’t quite the same.
Jasper would’ve broken down if Archie had changed his mind about him after he’d found out he was part monster, but Archie was still here.
He wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what they would find in Jasper’s past, no matter what would happen in Jasper’s future.
“And what about after this is over?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking about the sanctuary and what my parents were doing there. Even after all these years, interspecies couples and families still aren’t safe.”
“And you think it would be a good idea to open a place like the sanctuary again?”
Jasper shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about it.
I mean, I’m not human, so we’re not an interspecies couple, but I’m the proof that they can work.
My parents loved each other, even though my mother was human and my father was a monster.
I don’t know if we can build something like they did, but maybe we can try? ”
“We can do whatever you want,” Archie said, and it was a promise. Jasper knew that whatever he decided, Archie would be there to support him.
He really had chosen well when he’d decided to give Archie a chance.
He didn’t think he would ever regret it, and he hoped Archie wouldn’t, either.
Only the future would tell, and while their future seemed like it would be complicated, at least for now, Jasper had every faith that they would make it out stronger.
They would also make it out changed, but that didn’t have to be a bad thing.
Change could be good, especially when it meant discovering the past. Jasper could finally find out where he came from and what had happened to him.
It would take a lot of work, and he might not get all the answers he wanted, but maybe they didn’t matter.
His past had made him who he was now, but his present and his future were more important.