Epilogue
Galene
Two Years Later
C lio and I watch as Rourk and Arthur spar in the courtyard. May watches on the sidelines with her young cousin, each of them cheering on their fathers. Amil, Clio’s son, is a quick-witted two-year-old who seems to know too much about everything. May adores him and dotes on him.
Rourk and I are grateful to know she’ll feel the same about the child I carry now. We haven’t told her yet—we’re waiting until after her birthday, so she can have one final year to herself.
Clio grins at me. “Arthur cannot wait to be an uncle, you know.”
“Oh?” I ask.
She nods, laughter dancing in her eyes as she glances at me, then at my stomach, before turning back to her husband. Love glows in her eyes. “Yes. He plans to teach your young one every cuss word he can think of just to piss Rourk off.”
“Can’t wait,” I reply, joking.
Clio grins. “Rourk did the same with Amil. It’s only fair.”
“I suppose you and I just get caught in the crossfire.”
“And we wouldn’t have it any other way, would we?”
I shake my head. No, we wouldn’t. This life, though far different from the one I thought I would lead, the one where I imagined myself spending every day until my death in the Shanti Tribe, is the one I was destined for. I feel it in my bones. I was meant to be here, with Rourk and May and Clio and Arthur. We were meant to start this new generation of family, to bring peace between our people and make this world far greater than it has been in centuries.
But most of all, we were meant to love.
Rourk and I were meant to find each other. We were meant to fall in love, to marry each other beneath the sunset tucked within the branches of a willow tree with nobody but our family surrounding us. I was meant to meet May, to hear her call me Ma for the first time and to carry her sibling in my belly a year later. I was meant to find a profound friendship with Clio and a brotherly sort of fondness for her husband.
Love comes in so many different forms. But it is always powerful.
And it will always be what saves us in the end.