Epilogue #8
This was her calling. Not the CIA. Not federal politics. Not even the battlefield she and Bear had once walked together. This. Right here. Saving Native daughters who were never supposed to be forgotten.
A siren grew in the distance as the transport unit approached. The girls tightened around her, but she held them, steady and sure.
“You’re going home,” Bailee murmured. “I promise you.”
The oldest girl whispered, voice trembling, “How did you find us?”
Bailee looked out at the horizon, the lights of San Diego glowing like a promise. “We never gave up. We followed every lead, we used our resources and contacts.” She smiled. “I listened,” she said softly. “To the ground. To the wind. To the women who came before us. They always guide me.”
At that moment, standing beneath the open night sky with survivors clinging to her, Bailee felt the truth settle in her bones.
She was now facing the right way. She had been chosen to be fire, and she would burn a path through every shadow until the last girl was safe.
Sleeping Wind, Bear’s Residence, Bonita, California
The morning was quiet, just the two of them on his porch, steam curling from their coffee cups into the crisp air. Bear reached down to the side of his chair, pulled out a thick envelope, and held it across the space between them.
Bailee frowned, took it, and slid her thumb under the flap. Inside lay a sheet of parchment, heavy stock, the kind meant for framing. At the top, bold and undeniable, was the seal of the United States Congress. Her name blazed through the text. The Thunderhawk Bill.
The paper shook in her hands. She rose with a soft sound filled with love, with affection, with a connection so deep, Bear had to take his own shuddering breath.
Crossing the space, she lowered herself onto his lap, his body primed for her, eagerly folding her into his embrace.
The document slipped between them as her arms locked around his neck, her mouth pressed to the warm hollow of his throat.
She broke. Tears streamed hot and unrelenting, soaking into his skin as the weight of it, the magnitude of it, finally crashed through.
It was fitting her mouth should be there.
She had opened him up, supported and encouraged him so that his voice was strong and true, not bottled up and useless.
His arms banded around her, steady and sure. His voice rumbled against her ear, low and certain. “You did this, Bailee. You’re helping to heal more than your own nation. You’re healing all of us, every Native soul. Medicine woman, yes. My love, most definitely. You healed me, gave me peace.”
He drew back just enough to tip her chin up, his dark eyes steady on hers. “Now, you’ll be my wife.”
She lifted her head, her tears slipping down her cheeks, but there was mischief there, twinkling in the white-blue heat of those compelling eyes. “Is that so, handsome? You got anything to back that up?”
“With you? Of course. I wouldn’t dare come to you without a tribute.” He pulled out a large box, offering it to her.
She opened it and her breath caught. “Dakota. These are…” More tears slipped down her face, and in the shine he saw his future.
She sent her fingertips over the pair of wide sterling silver-over-gold medicine wheel bands, inlaid with red and black pipestone, white alabaster, and yellow sandstone.
“I love that they match.” Hers had a drop of turquoise centered in the middle, representing her heart. Etched on each side were eagle wings.
“Be my wife.” It was stark, clear, showing that his heart belonged to her. “My beautiful wife.”
Her breath hitched, the turquoise heart gleaming between them like proof she had never been unchosen. She blinked through tears, a shaky laugh breaking free. “You’re bossy, Locklear. Seeker, CIA, now FBI, and you think you can just claim me?”
His mouth curved, the faintest ghost of a smile. He was claiming her as his. “Not think. Know.”
Her mischief melted, leaving only the raw truth.
She pressed her forehead to his, whispering against his lips, “Then know this. I’ve been running all my life.
From my people, from shame, from you. But not anymore.
” Her fingers tightened around the band, her tears wet against his skin. “Yes, Dakota. I’ll be your wife.”
The Ancestor Fire Wedding, Open Field, Sleeping Wind, Bonita, California
Night gathered around Sleeping Wind like a warm cloak, the sky deep and velvety above the ridgeline.
The stars were bright tonight, sharp enough to pierce the darkness, steady enough to feel like witnesses.
Bailee stood barefoot in the cool grass, her dress brushing her ankles, her heartbeat a soft drum in her ears.
They had been joined legally for California laws, but this was their true joining.
The fire Bear had built glowed at the center of the clearing, low and steady, its flames rising and falling as if it breathed with them. Sweetgrass curled in the smoke, mixing with the scent of the ocean carried up from the cliffs below. She felt the land settle around her, attentive, remembering.
She had stood here before as a daughter of the people. Tonight she stood here as a woman joining her life to the man she loved.
Their family and friends gathered around the flames, his team, his brother, Than, Mom, Chay, and Ayla, along with Flynn Gallagher, Cormac Kavanaugh, and Indigo Fisher.
Her family, grandmother, aunt, and uncle.
The circle felt whole, warm, made of blood and bond and shared history.
The night breathed around them like a living spirit.
Bear approached the fire from the opposite side, the firelight warming the bronze of his skin and catching the deep shine of his hair.
He wore a simple shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, dark pants, his feet bare.
Nothing ceremonial. Nothing ornate. Just him.
Exactly as he was when she found him, when he found her, when they healed the broken and silent places in each other.
He paused at the fire’s edge, the glow washing across the strong line of his jaw, across the quiet certainty in his eyes.
The flames leaned toward him as if in recognition.
Bailee felt a slow shiver move through her, not fear, but the profound sense of witnessing something sacred, something ancient stepping into the world through the man she loved.
Bear lifted his gaze to hers, and the rest of the scene softened into shadow.
It was only them. Fire. Sky. Earth. Spirit. The promise waiting between them.
Flint trotted out of the shadows and sat at Bear’s heel with perfect stillness, as if he understood the weight of the moment. Bailee’s throat tightened. This dog had stood beside Bear through hell and was here now to witness his peace.
Bear held something carved in his hand. Cedar, smoothed and shaped, a small piece of the land he once prayed to in silence. Bailee held a braid of sweetgrass, bound earlier with her own ribbon.
For a moment neither of them moved. The night felt sacred. The ancestors felt close.
Bear stepped around the fire toward her, the flames casting shifting gold across his chest. He stopped in front of her with that quiet steadiness she had loved even before she understood it.
“We stand where our ancestors walked,” Bear said softly. His voice blended with the wind. “We join our lives under their witness.”
Bailee swallowed, her heart full enough to ache. “I stand with you,” she whispered. “Always.”
He offered his cedar piece to the fire. She followed with her sweetgrass braid. The flames reached up, accepting both offerings, curling smoke into the night sky in thin silver ribbons that lifted their intentions upward.
A hush fell around them. A breath of spirit. A stirring under her skin.
Bear turned toward her again, and she felt the earth shift under her feet.
He reached into his pocket and retrieved the rings. The medicine wheel bands caught the firelight, red, black, white, and yellow glinting like captured sunrise. The turquoise heart on hers shone bright as a star, held between eagle wings. Her chest tightened with emotion.
“Hold out your hand,” he murmured.
She did, her fingers trembling slightly.
He slid the ring onto her finger, slow and reverent, the metal warming instantly against her skin. “Bailee Thunderhawk,” he said, voice deep with everything he never used to know how to say, “you’re my compass. My quiet. My truth. Walk with me.”
Tears blurred the fire into molten gold. “Dakota,” she whispered, “you’re the place my spirit finally stopped running.”
She took his ring, the matching band broad and strong, a shape that fit him perfectly. She slid it onto his finger and felt the moment settle through both of them like a blessing. “You’re my balance,” she said softly. “My strength. My home.”
Flint gave a low rumble in his chest, almost like approval.
Bear stepped closer and lifted the star quilt draped over a nearby log. The quilt had been crafted by elders on Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge, a fusion of their families, their histories. Blue, red, white, yellow. Stars rising through darkness.
He wrapped it around her shoulders first, tender, reverent. Then he pulled her in against him, drawing the blanket around them both. The warmth of his body seeped through the fabric, grounding her, anchoring her.
His forehead touched hers.
“We walk together,” he murmured.
Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt. “Yes,” she breathed. “Always.”
The fire softened beside them, embers glowing steadily in the night. Smoke drifted upward like a long, slow prayer. Above, the stars shimmered as if moved by the moment.
Bailee leaned into the crook of his neck, feeling the steady rise of his breath, the certainty of his arms, the peace she had spent years believing she would never find.
Here, under the open sky, wrapped in a quilt born from two Nations, joined before the ancestors and the land that raised them both, she felt chosen.