Epilogue
EPILOGUE
KIRA
TWO WEEKS LATER
I t isn’t every morning that I wake up cuddling with a wolf, but I do this one.
We stayed in the outbuilding again, our last opportunity to take advantage of the soft straw and the cozy space, just the way it is before Dom and the rest of Pack Hunt rip everything out and get started on building a house for Dom and me.
Dom is awake already.
I run my hands over his fur and he sinks into the straw with a soft rumble of pleasure.
I cuddle up with the wolf who is also my husband, for a few minutes, then Dom pushes himself to his feet, licks my cheek with a rough tongue, which always makes me giggle and shove him away.
And as I rub the moisture away, he backs up. I watch him shift from wolf to man, and I will never, ever get used to it.
When he’s a wolf, I wear his wedding ring on a necklace, and when he’s a man again, he kisses me and asks for it back. It’s like every time he slides it back on his finger, he’s making another commitment to me.
He takes about a minute to shift.
As bright early morning sunlight streams over us, Dom rises from his crouch as a man, and there’s a strange new smile on his face as he moves closer.
“What?” I ask.
He lies on the straw close beside me and brushes the hair back from my brow.
“Did you know wolves have one of the sharpest noses in the world?” He kisses me, which distracts me from responding for several seconds.
“So?” I ask when he’s broken the kiss.
“So.” His next kiss lands on my throat, then he angles down, my breath catching.
When he stops, his eyes are on my bare stomach, since I’ve gotten in the habit of sleeping naked because of Dom. All that expensive nightwear Tricia picked out for me has gone to waste.
I get a strange flutter in my chest as he gently kisses my stomach.
“So when my beautiful mate’s scent changes, it usually means one thing.” He looks at me with a new, brilliant smile that I want to capture forever. “She’s pregnant with my child.”
“You’re sure?” I breathe.
He stretches beside me and touches his lips to mine. “I am.”
“But you don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl or if they will growl?”
He shakes his head, smiling. “Not yet. We’ll have to see about the growling if your scent changes again. I’ll know they’ll be a shifter when I can smell them.”
I stare up at him. “That’s so weird.”
He tickles me.
I dissolve into giggles as I bat his hands away. “Stop. I didn’t mean it.”
My laughter dies down after another solid minute of merciless tickling. When I wipe the tears from my eyes, Dom is braced on his elbow, looking down at me like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
“What is it? Do I have straw in my hair?”
He shakes his head. “Just amazed. And I don’t care about the straw.”
“At me?”
He kisses me. “That I have this ability to put a smile like that on your face. That you love me.”
Tears fill my eyes.
Dom told me about not knowing where he came from, or even having a name. It hurts to know he didn’t have the happy childhood I had with my parents and Aaron. But maybe he can see what it could have been like when we raise our child together.
“I wish I could take away all the bad things that ever happened to you,” I whisper.
“You do. You smile, and it’s just… gone.”
“I love you.”
“Not nearly as much as I love you.” His hand settles on my belly. “And this little one. We’re going to have to speed up this house building to have it done before they get here.”
I smile, envisioning two or three mini-Dom’s running around. Maybe even growling, which would be cute, as long as they didn’t try to bite me for pushing them to do their homework when they’re older. “Will we have just one?”
His gaze turns heated. “Do you want just one?”
Bryce didn’t want kids. Mostly because he didn’t want to share me, but I always did. I loved having a brother growing up, and I knew when I eventually had kids, I would want two or three. “Maybe three. As long as they all growl.”
He laughs. “You think I can decide that?”
“I do. You have this habit of making the impossible happen.” My amusement fades because my new life with Pack Hunt hasn’t involved some small, unexpected hurts. “Will Chloe come back?”
I haven’t been in Wylder long, but already the town, and a certain pack of shifters has become the family I never knew I needed. And this house feels like more of a home than I’ve had in years.
It feels like where I was always supposed to be. Maybe because I’m finally with the person I’m meant to be with. But I miss Chloe, who has left Wylder for a few days.
His smile fades too.
He told me about the dangers of Shawn knowing they are shifters. While Shawn has yet to tell anyone in Wylder about the pack of shifters living in their midst, things are not the same as they were before between them.
Shawn hasn’t come to the house even once, and Dom told me he’s not answering any of their calls. Whenever we’ve seen him in town, he’s been distant.
I hadn’t known that something was going on between Shawn and Chloe until I saw how quiet she was. When she said she was going to stay with Blair, an old packmate, in Colorado for a few days, no one seemed surprised.
“She’ll be back,” he assures me.
“And Shawn?”
He gathers me into his arms, kissing the top of my head. “Has done nothing, and it looks like he won’t.”
“Dom?”
He gently squeezes me. “Mate?”
I smile as I settle against him. “What does it feel like to have a mate bond?”
He’s told me before. Several times, in fact, but I love hearing him tell me about a thing I will never experience unless I’m a shifter. That is something I’m still not sure I want. Do I want to be able to shift into a wolf and howl at the moon?
I don’t know. Not yet. But we have time. More time, now I’m pregnant, to figure out if that’s something I might want in the future.
He doesn’t speak for several seconds, but when he does, I can tell he’s smiling. “Like there is nothing else I would ever want or need in the world. Like all my dreams and hopes came together in one person. You. Night after night, I’d sit on the porch, hoping for you. Now you’re here, I get to hold you every single night for the rest of our lives. It is the most incredible feeling in the world. That’s how it feels, Kira, to have you.”
I have tears in my eyes when he’s finished. “And will it always be like this?”
I hope so.
Dom smiles as he moves over me for the last night we’ll spend here before he and the others turn it into a house big enough for all the children we both want. “Forever, Kira. It will be like this forever.”