Epilogue
You don’t fight because you think you’ll survive. You fight because someone you love might.
— SOPHIA SCOTT, TO HER brOTHER
Irefused to release Lucas for days. It was as if he’d risen from the dead, a miracle.
Between my unquenchable need for his body against mine and the necessary moments of rest, he explained the story.
Theo had pulled us all from the burning building.
He sent me and Adam with the medical evacuation teams, but Lucas had been transported to Max Aota’s headquarters further east for treatment.
Barely healed, he was forced back into action far too soon on Nia Williams’s orders.
The strike team he’d trained for Haynes’s assassination had mostly survived, and Williams wanted the deed done on the coattails of the NAO’s destruction of our headquarters.
She thought an attack when their guard was down would be most successful, and she was right.
While I writhed in grief in a hospital in Canada, Lucas was sneaking Defiance soldiers right into Haynes’s circle.
He’d been the one to put a bullet in Richard Haynes’s head.
“I’m surprised you agreed to do it after everything they put you through,” I said, my cheek resting against his bare chest in our new bed. The jagged scar where Jack Miller’s knife had pierced his flesh was barely healed, and I trailed a soft touch over it.
His fingers threaded through my curls. “Williams made it clear your safety was dependent on my cooperation.”
My hand clenched. “One day, I’m going to dance on that woman’s grave.”
Thanks to Williams’s masterful manipulation of our entire lives, we couldn’t leave our temporary housing without being devoured by cameras, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to leave. I preferred to stay in bed with him and bask in how lucky we were to be alive and together and safe.
As the news and internet returned, my voice spilled our fake story everywhere.
Over the next several months, Until I die became a viral phenomenon, chanted in cult-like fashion across the country.
Tattooed on skin, spray painted on buildings, decoratively splashed over wedding photos and love letters, the words bombarded Lucas and me until we cringed with each new example.
The worst was the kiss.
Our kiss at the press conference had been immortalized like the V-J Day kiss photo from World War II. The Lovers of the Revolution, they called us, and Lucas rolled his eyes every time he heard it.
“Would you have kissed me like that if you’d known the whole world would see it?” I asked one night.
“I kissed you like that because the whole world would see it,” he said, caging me between his arms. “Now everyone knows exactly who you belong to.”
I hummed as his mouth dipped to my throat. “I don’t think it was ever in question.”
In the weeks following the reestablishment of democracy, we had visits or calls from everyone. Once she was cleared to leave Canada, Zara traveled to New York City to help the city recover, but promised to visit soon.
“I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be here,” I said over a late-night phone call.
“Oh?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I can’t stay in this city where everyone knows my face.”
She chuckled. “Well, let me know where you land, Juliet. I’ll come visit.”
Isaac survived the battle at headquarters and joined Lucas’s assassination mission as planned. When he visited us a couple of days after the press conference, he’d given me a stiff hug.
“Where’s Dev?” I asked.
Isaac swallowed. “He, uh… He didn’t make it. That grenade got him.”
The familiar darkness spilled into my heart, that ache of loss. My throat grew thick. “No.”
Isaac’s eyes went bright. “He was pushing me out of the way, and he just—”
I hugged him again, my chest tight. “He saved you.”
He said little else, and when he left, Lucas held me while I cried.
“Do you really think it’s over?” I asked once the tears dried up. “It’s so hard for me to believe.”
“It’s over, Sophia,” he said and kissed my temple. “Never again, okay?”
I nodded. “Even though it seems impossible, I’m choosing to believe you.”
He chuckled. “It’s about fucking time.”
A few weeks after Isaac’s visit, Adam had finally healed enough to fly from Canada. He stayed in the guest room of the apartment Williams had granted us in DC, but left after only a few weeks to help subdue the NAO riots in Baltimore.
“Stay safe,” I said, gripping him tight before he shipped out.
“I always do.”
When I released him, Adam turned to Lucas and offered a handshake. “It’s been a wild ride with you, man.”
Lucas gripped his hand, the hate brands freshly covered by a sleeve of ink. “Let’s not do it again.”
Adam’s friendly smile creased the skin around his eyes. “Take care of yourselves. I’ll see you soon.”
He closed the door behind him, and another silly urge to cry washed over me. When would my emotions settle? It seemed they sat right at the surface, begging for release.
Lucas took one look at my face and pulled me into a hug. “He’ll come back,” he said.
Would the fear of loss ever truly leave me? Was this my new normal?
But it occurred to me as I settled into his familiar embrace that with the country in some state of normalcy, I didn’t have to suffer in the dark anymore. I finally had options. Therapy. Counseling. Medications.
Those things had existed at one point, and they would again.
More than that, I had my autonomy back. I could choose how to address my mental health, when to see a doctor. Hell, I could choose to go outside in shorts and a tank top without worrying some soldier would lay eyes on me and think, Mine.
I was now an equal member of society again, and maybe, with some effort, with some help, I might have a chance at healing these deep wounds I’d thought were fatal.
While we waited for the clearance to move, Lucas and I debated where we’d go. Eventually, we settled on the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. We’d find something secluded. Something quiet.
Something safe.
After over six months of playing mascot to the Prime Delegate, she cleared us for travel. “But you can’t leave the country,” she said during an official visit to our borrowed apartment. “We may still need you.”
Lucas’s glare would have made most melt in fear, but not Williams.
“You can hate me as much as you want, Mister Scott,” Williams replied, “but you are both civil servants, and if you’re needed to help me keep the peace, you will do it with a smile.” She turned for the door, leaving Theo to wince in apology.
“You have to forgive her,” he said. “She did save all our lives.”
Lucas clicked his tongue, mocking. “Oh, Uncle Theo. I thought that’s what I did.”
Theo’s hard stare won him a smirk from Lucas, who left us to visit alone.
Theo eyed me. “You’re going to keep him, aren’t you? I have to deal with that for the rest of my life?”
I lifted one shoulder. “I love him.”
“You have terrible taste in men.”
Maybe he was right, but I still chose to become Sophia Scott as soon as Lucas was given signed confirmation of a full pardon for his crimes the following year. He’d refused to give me forever until he knew he could deliver.
On the night we took our vows, we held each other in our secluded cabin, dancing to soft music.
I gazed into those pretty eyes, grinning. “Now you have to stay with me.”
He kissed me, his fingers on my back drawing his name again and again. “I should have known not to go to war with your stubbornness.”
I buried my smile in his neck. “Can you believe we made it here, Lucas?”
“Despite all my warnings, you married the devil, and you’re happy about it. I’m convinced all the blows to your head have caused brain damage.”
I slapped the back of his head, ruffling his hair. “I could always annul.”
Traces of the predator emerged, and he pressed a soft, possessive kiss right against my pulse. “No. You’re mine forever now, sweetheart.”
My smile would never leave me. I was sure of it. I thought of his face as he’d spoken his promise to be mine, that protective gleam in his eye.
Til death do us part.
The same vow. Different words.
Until I die.
“Forever,” I agreed. “The people will be so happy you finally put the ring on the right finger.”
He chuckled and took my hand from his neck to gaze down at the diamond on my ring finger, right beside the gold band I still wore. “The wolves really wanted a picture of this thing, didn’t they?”
The number of paparazzi outside the courthouse was appalling, every single one of them shouting, Show us the ring!
“Do you think they’d still believe it was all so romantic if they knew the real story?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Who’s going to tell them?”
I set my arms around his neck once more and peered into those eyes, thinking of the first moment I’d truly looked into them.
I’d been so certain the beauty within was a mask hiding his infinite evil.
Little did I know that the killer was the mask.
In the beginning, his eyes had been the only truthful part of him.
The part that told me his was a soul worth saving.
“Maybe I will,” I said. “Maybe I’ll tell them everything.”
“Yeah?” he asked, now distracted by slipping the straps of my dress from my shoulders. “What would you call it? That Time I Got Railed by a Psychopath?”
The garment fell to the floor at my feet as I laughed.
“I think I’d call it, Until I Die.”