Epilogue
DECLAN
Three weeks, and the scent is always on my mind.
It’s already busy enough lately, with us checking in on neighboring packs and clans to make sure there’s no sudden blowback in the aftermath of our attacks.
As far as we know, things have been quiet.
It’s not like Moore broadcast his work all over the place.
He couldn’t risk pulling back the curtain and having the real, legitimate medical community shut him down once they knew how he obtained his data.
Still, even with that calming down and life going back to normal, there’s more than enough work with the pack to keep me busy without my focus being diluted by Iris’s new scent. It’s been driving me crazy.
Not in a bad way. The kind of crazy where I keep finding excuses to press my nose into her hair or pull her against me just to breathe her in. Iris thinks I’m being clingy, not that she’s complaining.
She’s not wrong, either. But there’s a reason, and I’ve been waiting until I was sure before I said anything.
I’ve been sure for about four days now. The scent changed—something richer underneath her usual smell, sweeter, layered in a way that made my wolf go still the first time I caught it. Like he already knew. As if he’d been waiting for it.
And then, two nights ago, lying beside her in the dark with my ear against her stomach because I couldn’t help myself… I heard it.
Not one heartbeat. Two.
I almost woke her up right there. It took everything I had to stay quiet, to let her sleep, to lie there grinning at the ceiling like an idiot while a tiny heartbeats drummed against my ear.
But she deserves better than being shaken awake at three in the morning with news that’s going to change everything.
She deserves a moment. A real one. After everything she’s been through, she deserves something that feels chosen.
Something that feels like the beginning it actually is. She’s already been robbed of so much.
So I wait. I plan. I pack a bag with food and a blanket and two bottles of the sparkling cider she likes, and I take her hand and lead her through the trees to the meadow by the creek.
It’s late afternoon. The light is golden, slanting through the birches, catching the water where it runs over the smooth stones.
Wildflowers are starting to push through the grass.
She kicks off her shoes and walks barefoot to the water’s edge and tips her face up to the sun, and she looks so different from the pale, shaking girl I carried out of that facility that sometimes I forget they’re the same person.
She’s not, really. She’s someone new. We both are.
We eat. We talk about nothing important—Cole and Zeke’s latest argument about whose turn it is to cook, the fence Kyran promised to fix three days ago and hasn’t touched, whether Tara is going to kill him over it. Normal things. Family things.
When the food is gone, and she’s leaning back against my chest with her bare feet in the grass and the creek singing beside us, I press my lips to her ear.
“I need to tell you something.”
She tilts her head, wearing a tiny smile. “Okay.”
I love this woman. A wave of that love and the protectiveness that comes with it swells up in me. It’s like having my entire world looking back at me. I watch closely for her reaction once I murmur, “You’re pregnant.”
Silence. I can feel it, see it. The way the information sets off a chain reaction in her. It starts with shock, white and electric, expanding outward.
“I’ve been smelling the change in you for weeks. I wanted to be sure.” I put my hand on her stomach. Flat, unchanged. Not for long. “I’m sure now. I can hear the heartbeats.”
“Heartbeats,” she repeats, blinking fast while her cheeks go red. “Plural?”
I can’t help the grin. “Twins.”
She twists in my arms. Her eyes are wide and bright and filling with tears that spill over before she can blink them back, and then her hands are on my face, and she’s kissing me—my mouth, my cheeks, my forehead, my jaw, laughing and crying at the same time, and she pushes me backward into the grass, and I let her because there is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be than flat on my back in a meadow with this woman on top of me, kissing my face, and carrying our children.
“Twins,” she whispers against my lips. Then she laughs, bright and full. The sound of it settles into my chest right next to the steady hum that’s been there since the first night I caught her scent on the wind.
She kisses me again, harder this time, deeper. That’s all it takes for everything to change. The air around us suddenly gets hotter, but in a good way. The kind of heat that doesn’t singe our skin.
She rolls her hips in a slow circle, and the friction makes me grip her ass and pull her tight against me, where I’m thickening, getting harder. Nothing will ever quench the thirst I have for her. It’s like a living thing pulsing in me.
Her tongue slides against mine, and I meet it, teeth clashing, her lips probably bruising against mine when I use my free hand to hold the back of her head in place so I can kiss her completely, claiming her mouth while she grinds against me until I smell her arousal—fresh, sweet, strong enough to stir my wolf and make him howl for relief.
“Ride me,” I whisper between kisses with a growl in my voice. “Let me watch you.”
There’s a flush on her skin that I reveal once she sits up, and I pull her dress over her head. Her full, perfect tits spill free, and I catch them in my hands, straining upward to wrap my lips around one nipple, then the other, teasing them into tight peaks while she rocks her hips against me.
“Yes, yes…” Her fingers tangle in my hair while she whimpers softly with every flick of my tongue. There’s a power in this that goes beyond my wolf or my status in the pack. Knowing I can bring this perfect creature so much pleasure to make up for all the pain.
I can’t take it anymore—if I get any harder, I’ll tear through my jeans. We’re both breathless, panting as we fumble with the belt and the zipper, then with her lacy thong, which I finally tear in my impatience.
She doesn’t seem to mind, wrapping her slim fingers around my shaft and making my vision go blurry when she strokes me slowly. Her thumb smears precum around my head before she lifts herself onto her knees to take me inside.
Her cunt swallows me all at once, settling at the base with a deep, throaty moan that reverberates through me.
Then she starts to move, leaning down so her hair brushes my face while her hot breath fans over my skin.
I take hold of her hips, pulling her down while I lift my hips to meet hers.
My base grinds against her clit, and she moans into my mouth.
Yes, that’s good; that’s what I want to hear.
The sound of her coming apart while her sweet juices drench me.
“That’s incredible.” She moves faster, bearing down hard. Taking what she needs, not asking permission, not that she needs to. I want to give it to her. I want her to feel everything, as much as she can, for as long as I can give it.
Her nipples brush my chest when she plants a hand on the other side of my head.
Her face is locked in concentration—eyes closed, mouth open, tiny gasps in her throat every time she grinds while I move inside her.
When she throws her head back, her throaty cry fills the air and makes the birds take flight in the trees around us.
I sit up, tasting the skin of her neck, her shoulder, one hand in her hair, the other arm around her back to hold her close. “Yes, just like that,” she pleads, breathless, jerking wildly as she tightens around me, tighter, then finally clenches before shattering.
And I go with her, spilling into her quivering sheath as she trembles in my arms. My mate, my life, the mother of my children. She trembles against me, and I hold her to make sure she doesn’t fall apart. I’ll never let her fall apart.
With her arms around my shoulders, she presses her lips to the side of my neck. “I love you. And I hope they look like you.”
My laughter rings out, sharp and clear. “Please. Those poor kids. Don’t put that kind of bad luck on them.”
Then I pull back, brushing strands of golden hair away from her forehead. “I would rather they look like you. Or maybe one of each. What do you think about that?”
Tears sparkle, making her eyes look bluer than ever.
“You know what I think? I think they’re lucky to be born into this family.
They’re lucky they’ll have so much love around them.
” Because she knows what it’s like to not have that.
She doesn’t need to say it, not to me. I feel it. I know exactly what she means.
Instead of rushing back to tell the family, we stay in the meadow for a long time. Just the two of us—no, the four of us. Our little family in our own little world, laughing and wishing and dreaming of what the future will bring.
Nothing has ever been so right.
Thank you for reading Flawed Fate.