Epilogue
TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER
AUREN
The Brotherhood fortress has never been this loud.
I stand in the doorway of the Fire-Bringer common room, watching chaos unfold with what I suspect is a ridiculous smile on my face.
Drayke’s twins—eighteen months of pure destruction wrapped in bronze curls and amber eyes—are currently attempting to climb their uncle Rurik like he’s a particularly interesting tree.
Kael has made it to Rurik’s shoulders. Lyric—named for my sister, a gift that still makes my chest tight every time I hear it—is dangling from his arm, shrieking with laughter.
“A little help here?” Rurik’s voice is strained, but he’s grinning. He’s always grinning when the children are involved. The dragon who once lived for battle and chaos has discovered a new kind of chaos to love.
“You seem to have it handled.” I lean against the doorframe, arms crossed, enjoying his predicament far more than I should.
“Auren.” Drayke’s voice carries the weight of a king’s command, but there’s laughter underneath it.
He’s sprawled on one of the comfortable couches Selene insisted on adding, his mate tucked against his side, watching their offspring terrorize his brother with the satisfied expression of a woman who knows exactly how blessed she is.
“Don’t look at me.” Selene waves a hand lazily. “They’re his children too. He can rescue his brother.”
“Traitor,” Drayke murmurs against her hair, but he’s pressing a kiss there as he says it.
His hand rests on her stomach—flat now, but they’ve been trying for a third.
The way Drayke looks at his mate, at his children, never fails to strike me.
The dragon king who once ruled with fierce isolation now wears fatherhood like a crown he was born to carry.
Kael finally tumbles from Rurik’s shoulders into a controlled fall—dragon reflexes already developing, even in a toddler—and immediately runs to his father.
Drayke catches him without looking, settling the boy on his knee with practiced ease.
Lyric follows moments later, climbing into Selene’s lap and demanding a story with the imperious tone of a princess who knows she’ll get whatever she wants.
She will. She always does. We’re all helpless against those amber eyes.
“Da!” A smaller voice calls from across the room, and my attention shifts to where Aisling sits in a rocking chair by the fire, her daughter in her arms.
Ember is eight months old, with her mother’s red hair and her father’s golden eyes.
She’s reaching toward Rurik with chubby hands, apparently deciding that if the twins get to climb him, she should too.
Rurik crosses the room in three strides and scoops her from Aisling’s arms, lifting her high enough to make her squeal.
“There’s my girl.” His voice goes soft in a way I never heard before Aisling came into his life. Before Ember. The wildfire dragon, domesticated by a healer and an infant with grabby hands. “Did you miss me? I was gone for thirty whole seconds.”
“She’s been inconsolable.” Aisling’s dry tone is undermined by the warmth in her eyes as she watches her mate with their daughter. “Practically wasting away.”
Rurik settles into the chair beside her, Ember tucked against his chest, one massive hand spanning nearly the entire width of her back. The contrast should look absurd—the warrior dragon cradling something so small and fragile. Instead, it looks right. Like he was made for exactly this moment.
He presses a kiss to Aisling’s temple. She leans into him without looking away from the tiny socks she’s knitting—for Tamsin’s baby, I realize. The thought sends warmth flooding through my chest.
My baby. Our baby. Still months away, but already so real, I can barely breathe around the anticipation.
“You’re hovering.”
Tamsin’s voice pulls me from my reverie. She’s appeared at my side, her hand sliding into mine with the easy familiarity of two years of marriage. Her other hand rests on the swell of her belly—five months along now, just starting to show in ways that make my dragon instincts go haywire.
“I’m observing.” I pull her closer, my arm wrapping around her waist.
“You’re hovering.” She tips her face up, and I take the invitation, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. She tastes like the honeyed tea Aisling insists all the pregnant Fire-Bringers drink. “But I love you anyway.”
“I love you.” Three years of saying it, and the words still feel like a gift every time. “Both of you.”
My hand joins hers on her belly. The baby kicks against my palm—strong, insistent, already making its presence known. The sensation steals my breath every single time.
“Active today.” Tamsin’s smile is radiant.
Pregnancy suits her—she glows with it, her power somehow brighter, her fire burning steadier.
The Crown rests dormant at her chest as it has for two years, its threat contained, its purpose fulfilled.
She’s more than its guardian now. She’s a queen, a wife, soon to be a mother. She’s everything.
“Takes after its mother.” I spread my fingers wider, chasing the movement. “Restless. Impatient. Determined to make its presence known.”
“Excuse me?” She pokes my chest with her free hand. “I seem to recall a certain dragon who couldn’t wait ten minutes for dinner last night because he had ‘strategic concerns’ about—”
I kiss her again, partly to stop the teasing, mostly because I can. Because she’s here, and she’s mine, and I spent six centuries not knowing what I was missing.
“Get a room,” Rurik calls from across the space.
“We have several,” I reply without breaking the kiss. “In two different locations. The benefits of splitting our time between a fortress and a kingdom.”
Tamsin laughs against my mouth. The sound vibrates through me, warm and perfect and exactly what I never knew I needed.
The doors open again, and Zyphon enters with Nasyra.
He looks... different. Has for two years now, ever since Ulrik’s death started unraveling the curse that consumed him.
The purple cracks are gone from his scales entirely.
The shadows still answer him—will likely answer him until he dies—but they no longer feed on him. No longer consume him from within.
He looks younger. Lighter. Like the dragon he might have been if tragedy hadn’t shaped him into something darker.
Nasyra walks beside him, her hand resting on a belly that matches Tamsin’s almost exactly.
They’re due within weeks of each other—something the Fire-Bringer women find endlessly amusing and the dragons find endlessly terrifying.
Two pregnant mates. Two sets of protective instincts driving us all to distraction.
“You’re late.” Selene’s voice carries across the room. “The children nearly destroyed Rurik before you could witness it.”
“We saw through the window.” Nasyra’s mismatched eyes—one purple, one pink—sparkle with amusement. “We decided to wait until the carnage was complete.”
“Tactical delay.” Zyphon’s voice is dry, but there’s warmth beneath it that wasn’t there two years ago. His hand rests on the small of Nasyra’s back, guiding her toward the couches with a possessive tenderness that makes something settle in my chest.
We made it. All of us. Four brothers who spent centuries alone, who buried themselves in duty and grief and the careful absence of hope. And now—
Now we have this.
Tamsin releases my hand to cross the room toward Nasyra.
They embrace carefully—bellies making it complicated—and then sink onto a couch together, heads bent close, already deep in conversation.
Selene and Aisling drift over to join them, and within moments, the four women are a closed circle, voices overlapping, laughter punctuating whatever secrets they’re sharing.
The Fire-Bringer sisterhood. Stronger than ever. Bound by fire and survival and the peculiar joy of loving impossible dragons.
“They’re plotting something.” Rurik appears at my shoulder, Ember still cradled against his chest. The baby has fallen asleep, her tiny fist curled in her father’s shirt.
“They’re always plotting something.” Drayke joins us, Kael on his hip, Lyric clinging to his leg. The king of dragons, reduced to a climbing structure for toddlers. He’s never looked happier.
“Let them plot.” Zyphon’s voice is quiet, his gaze fixed on Nasyra with an intensity that speaks to three centuries of waiting to hold her again. “They’ve earned it.”
They have. We all have.
Later, after dinner has devolved into cheerful chaos and the children have been carried off to bed, I find myself on the ramparts with my brothers.
The same ramparts where Tamsin asked me to claim her. The same view—mountains stretching endlessly, stars blazing overhead—but everything else has changed.
“Remember when this fortress was quiet?” Rurik leans against the parapet, a cup of wine in his hand that he’s barely touched. “When the most exciting thing that happened in a given week was Auren reorganizing the library?”
“I remember.” Drayke’s voice is thoughtful. “I remember thinking that was enough. That duty and discipline were all we needed. That wanting more was... dangerous.”
“It is dangerous.” I watch the stars, but I’m not really seeing them.
I’m seeing Tamsin’s face when she told me she loved me.
When she asked me to claim her. When she told me she was pregnant and I forgot how to breathe for a full minute.
“Loving someone that much—it’s terrifying. The thought of losing them...”
“Worth it.” Zyphon’s voice is soft. “I lost Nasyra for three centuries. Would have lost her forever if the Relics hadn’t brought her back. And I would do it all again—every moment of that suffering—to have her now.”
Silence settles over us. Not uncomfortable. Just... full. Full of understanding, of shared experience, of the bone-deep gratitude that comes from finding something you never thought you’d have.