Epilogue #3
When I reached him, he didn’t speak. He just lifted a hand, hesitant for the first time since I’d known him, like he needed permission to touch what he was seeing.
I nodded.
His fingers brushed my waist, then tightened, grounding himself. His voice came out rough. “You’re real.”
I smiled through the sting in my eyes. “So, are you.”
The ceremony unfolded like it had always been waiting for us.
Portia stood calm and radiant, orchestrating without intruding. Words were spoken about roots and return, about love chosen daily.
When it was our turn to speak, Micah took my hands like they were the only solid thing left in the world.
“I don’t know how to love safely,” he said quietly. “But I know how to love completely. And I choose you. In every version of my life.”
My throat closed. I forced the words out, anyway.
“I spent my whole life believing love was something you earned by being easy to keep,” I said. “You taught me that love can be fierce and still be gentle. That I don’t have to disappear to be chosen. I choose you, Micah. In every place we’ve been—and every place we’re going.”
He broke then. Just a little. His forehead pressed to mine as the officiant smiled knowingly and gave us a second we hadn’t asked for, but needed.
When we were pronounced married, the cheers were loud and unrestrained—brothers shouting, women laughing, someone crying openly without apology.
I looked out and saw my parents.
Momma had both hands over her mouth, tears streaming freely down her cheeks, pride written into every line of her face. Daddy stood tall beside her, eyes bright and wet, nodding to himself like he’d always known this was coming. My siblings were beaming.
When the last kiss was kissed and the last cheer rose and the guests were guided back to the cabins, the night softened into something intimate.
Bonfires crackled. Laughter drifted low and easy. The men shed their jackets and leaned into the night like boys again—barefoot, beer bottles clinking, shoulders loose.
Fourteen Dane men gathered with their women like a circle of constellations finally aligned.
Someone popped champagne.
Glasses were passed.
Laughter rose.
And when a flute of champagne was handed to me, I took it automatically—then paused.
Because the smell hit my nose and my stomach did something small and immediate.
No.
Not tonight.
Not anymore.
I set the glass down without thinking.
Portia’s eyes snapped to mine.
Then to my hand—resting absently on my belly.
Then back to my face.
Her expression changed in an instant.
“Joy,” she said softly.
Micah’s head turned sharply, attention narrowing like a blade.
“What?” he asked, immediate alarm in his tone.
I swallowed.
The firelight danced. The night held its breath.
I looked at him, my heart pounding with a different kind of fear now—not danger, not Victoria, not war.
This was holy terror.
This was hope.
“I …” My voice shook. I laughed once, breathless. “I’m not drinking champagne.”
Silence.
Then Sloane whispered loudly, “Oh, my God.”
Hallie Mae gasped and clutched her belly like she’d just been given a best friend for her unborn baby.
Micah stared at me.
His face went unreadable for one single second—the soldier trying to process without emotion.
Then it cracked.
His eyes widened.
“Joy,” he breathed, barely audible. “Are you—”
I nodded, tears already spilling.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I am.”
Micah moved like the world had just given him oxygen.
He crossed to me, dropped to his knees in the dirt like he didn’t care who saw, and pressed his forehead to my abdomen as if he could already feel the future there.
His hands shook.
He laughed—a broken, stunned sound.
Then he looked up at me with eyes that were wrecked and shining and full of something so fierce it scared me.
“Baby,” he whispered. “We made a life.”
I nodded, sobbing now. “We did.”
He stood and pulled me into his arms so tight it felt like he was trying to fuse us together.
Around us, the family erupted—cheers, cries, hands reaching, Portia wiping tears.
Thirteen brothers.
All of them watching Micah hold me like I was everything.
And for the first time since Deveaux Bank, since Victoria’s truth cracked me open, since grief tried to turn my name into irony—
I felt only one thing, pure and clean.
Joy.
Not the kind you borrowed.
Not the kind you pretended.
The kind that rooted.
The kind that grew.
Micah kissed my temple and murmured, against my hair, “You’re mine.”
I looked up at the sky—endless, black, alive with stars—and I let myself believe it.
That the past could hurt and still not define me.
That love could be dangerous and still be worth it.
That family could be engineered and still become real.
That my name wasn’t a coincidence.
It was a destiny.
And this—this life inside me, this man holding me, this wild, impossible Dane family gathered around a fire on the land that raised them—
This wasn’t the end.
It was the beginning.
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