Epilogue
MELODY
T he ride back feels surreal.
The sky burns pale with dawn, the wind a cool hush through the pines. The air still hums faintly with what we did—what we became.
Every heartbeat feels shared. Every breath echoes two.
When the ranch comes into view, I almost sob. Smoke curls from the chimney. The smell of coffee and pine pitch drifts through the air. Home.
Grandma stands on the porch, her wool shawl pulled tight. Grandpa’s at her side, eyes narrowed toward the rising sun. Behind them, the sky ripples faintly—strange lights flickering along the ridge, fading like spent auroras.
They saw it. They felt it.
“Maveryk,” Grandma says when we dismount, her tone both relief and warning. “The mountains sang all night. Storms that weren’t storms. Lights that weren’t lightning.” Her gaze shifts to my burned wrist, the faint outline of the bracelet gleaming like old silver. “And now the song’s changed.”
Maveryk dips his head respectfully. “It had to.”
Grandpa studies him for a long moment, then nods once—the kind of nod men give when they’ve lived long enough to stop asking for explanations. “The land keeps its bargains,” he murmurs, then turns toward the barn to tend the stock like nothing’s happened.
Inside, warmth wraps around us—woodsmoke, cedar, bread baking. I wash the dirt and ash from my hands. When I look up, Maveryk’s watching me, his eyes softer than I’ve ever seen.
“You think they’ll come back?” I ask quietly. “The ones that hunted us?”
“They’ll try.” His hand grazes mine, our scars flaring faintly gold. “But not here.”
“Why not?”
He glances toward the window, where mist coils over the fields like breath. “Don’t know.”
Grandma chimes in, “Great-great-grandma always said here, the mountain hides what it claims. The ore, the hum—it’s alive. Out there, you’d be easy to find. But here, under this sky, on your family’s ground…” Her voice lowers. “The land remembers its own.”
My pulse stutters, wanting to believe.
Maveryk nods, adding, “Songline blood. The ones who healed and hid my ancestors when the purges came. Their voices taught the range how to sing. That’s why your bracelet worked, why the mountain answered you. You’re not just from this land—you’re of it. And now, it protects you … protects us.”
Grandma smiles, reassuring.
A warmth spreads through me, deep and ancient, the kind that feels like roots reaching down to touch other roots.
“Then, we stay,” I whisper.
He smiles faintly. “We stay.”
Outside, the air trembles—not danger this time, but movement. Hoofbeats. Wheels. Footsteps.
I step to the porch as riders crest the ridge—dozens, maybe more. Some on horseback, some walking, faces I don’t know but that Maveryk clearly does. They look wild and worn, but when they see him, their eyes light with recognition.
“The Wildbloods.” I breathe. “They’re?—”
“Answering the call,” he finishes. “The pulse we sent out. It didn’t just drive the Hollowed back—it woke the rest of us up.”
The cowboys reach the yard. A woman dismounts first, her tattoos faint beneath her collarbone. “Maveryk,” she says, voice breaking. “We thought you were gone.”
“Not gone,” he answers, glancing at me. “Found.”
Her eyes drop to our matching scars, and understanding ripples through the crowd like a shared chord. Hope—low and steady—builds in the air, humming in time with the earth.
Grandma joins me on the porch, her hand finding mine. “Prophecies repeat in cycles,” she says softly. “When one song ends, another begins.”
Below, the Wildbloods gather in a wide circle, faces lifted toward the pale morning light. The hum of the mountains deepens, fuller now—alive again.
Maveryk turns to me, voice rough. “You asked what comes next.”
I nod, breath catching.
He smiles, faint and fierce. “We rebuild.”
And when he says it, I believe him.
The mountain wind brushes over us, carrying the scent of snowmelt and pine sap. The hum slips lower, settling deep in the stone, into bone, into blood.
Outside, dawn waits—and for the first time in a long time, it feels like home.
The mountains sleep, the sky remembers, and two souls still hum as one.
What begins in fire ends in dawn—and the world will never be the same.
Unlock the exclusive bonus scene when you join the Wildblood world .
A bond hums in a forbidden key, and for the first time in a century, the Sentinel designated Everett hesitates.
Maybe the anomaly isn’t corruption.
Maybe it’s awakening.