Epilogue
Violet
Three Years Later
The first time I felt both babies kick at once, I laughed and cried in the same breath.
Blade panicked.
“Is that bad?” he demanded, already halfway off the couch like he was about to call Havoc, Ghost, and possibly the National Guard.
“It’s normal,” I told him, still laughing. “They’re just… enthusiastic.”
He sat back down slowly, one hand already on my stomach. He doesn’t even realize he does that now. Protects without thinking. Guards without being asked.
Three years.
Sometimes it feels like a lifetime. Sometimes it feels like a blink that started in a neon-lit club and ended in a cabin that changed everything.
It took almost a year to shut down Salazar’s operation.
Clubs closed for “violations.”
Licenses pulled.
Shipments intercepted.
People flipped.
Some of his men died. Some went to prison.
Blade and his brothers pulled more girls out than I’ll ever know the full number of.
I watched Salazar Huntington disappear piece by piece.
By the time it was over, his name wasn’t powerful anymore.
It was a warning.
That year was hard.
There were nights Blade came home with bruised knuckles and silence in his eyes. Nights when Ghost called too late. Nights when I pretended not to hear the low, tense conversations on the porch.
But he never let it touch me.
He built walls between us and the storm.
And when it finally ended, it wasn’t dramatic.
It was just… finished.
Like a door closing.
We got married months after that first night in the cabin. I already knew I was his from the start. My brother protested, loudly and theatrically, but it was all for show. He saw what I saw. He knew Blade would love me and protect me with everything he had.
Now I sit on the porch swing, one hand cradling the curve of my stomach. I’m round enough that I can’t see my own feet anymore.
Blade stands in the yard splitting wood.
Shirtless.
Of course.
Three years haven’t softened him.
They’ve steadied him.
The lines around his eyes are still there. The scars still map his skin. He still wakes some nights breathing too hard.
But he doesn’t wake alone anymore.
And he doesn’t pull away when I pull him back.
He feels me watching him and looks up.
That familiar heat flickers in his eyes, even now.
“You staring at me, wife?” he calls.
I smile. “Maybe.”
He drops the axe and walks toward me like he has all the time in the world.
When he reaches the porch, he rests both hands on my stomach and lowers his forehead to mine.
“How are my boys?” he asks softly.
“Or girls,” I remind him.
He grunts. “They’re boys.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I feel it.”
I laugh.
When I told him I was pregnant, he didn’t speak for a full thirty seconds.
Then he walked outside.
Then he came back in and said, very seriously, “We need a bigger house.”
When the doctor said twins, he went quiet again.
I thought he was overwhelmed.
Turns out he was calculating square footage.
“You’re quiet,” I tell him now.
He studies me. “I was thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.”
A low hum of amusement vibrates in his chest.
“I was thinking,” he says slowly, “that three years ago, I walked into a club ready to burn the world down.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m arguing with you about paint colors for a nursery.”
I reach up and touch the scar near his temple.
“And which one scares you more?”
He doesn’t hesitate.
“The nursery.”
I laugh so hard the babies kick again.
He freezes.
“See?” I say. “They agree.”
His hands spread over my stomach, protective. Almost reverent.
“You good?” he asks quietly.
“Always.”
His eyes soften in a way only I ever see.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”