EPILOGUE
DAKOTA
ONE YEAR LATER
Maine is actually going to ruin my hand.
Not with violence. And not with blood. Both of which I think I would prefer over the real criminal he’s about to use to ruin my goddamn hand.
He sits in front of me, cross-legged with one of my hands balanced on his knee like he’s in the depths of restoring a priceless painting instead of just my nails.
I eye the glitter like it’s personally offended my ancestors and their ancestors before them, wondering what hellhole Maine found it in. I must be putting too much energy into that instead of keeping my hand still, because Maine glares up at me from under his eyelashes, a frown firmly in place.
“Hold still,” he requests a second time, bent over my fingers with the intense focus of a professional bomb defuser.
I roll my eyes. “I am holding still.”
“You literally twitched,” he points out.
“Can’t prove it. My soul twitched. My hand was innocent,” I counter, eyeing the brush as it drags along my index fingernail.
“Then your soul must be attached to your hand.”
“Scientifically unproven,” I argue, shaking my head and jerking my hand by accident.
Oops.
“Mercer would agree with me,” Maine says over a sigh, using his blunt nails to remove a streak of black painted over my skin.
I scoff at my brother. “Mercer literally spent forty minutes arguing with a cupboard because he thought it was jammed once. What kind of argument are you trying to make here?”
“It was jammed,” Maine defends.
“It opened inward,” I tell him blandly.
Maine pauses then, nail polish brush suspended above my middle finger. The wind lifts a pale strand of hair across his face, and he blows it away with far more drama than was called for.
“You know,” he says. “I could still make one nail glittery.”
I narrow my eyes on him. “You wouldn’t.”
His gray eyes narrow on me. “Try me.”
“I’m a respected member of this community, you know,” I tell him, giving him a dirty look. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
He only raises an eyebrow. “You threatened a councilman with a teaspoon literally just last week.”
I pause. “He called me inspiring.”
“You said, and this is a direct quote, ‘Call me that again and I’ll ram this spoon so far up your ass you’ll choke on the handle,’ so I’m not sure what to tell you,” he reminds me, quoting me word for word.
I hate it when he does that.
“In my defense, I restrained myself,” I mutter, wincing when he colors outside the lines on my index finger.
Maine smiles then, a small and crooked smile that always suckers me with how familiar it is. It still does something weird to my chest even a year after we finally found one another again.
The roof under us is warm from the afternoon sun, rough concrete biting through the blanket we decided to drag up here.
Haven Ridge is spread out below, bigger and louder than it was a year ago.
Less haunted. Or maybe the ghosts have simply learned to make room for the living.
For gardens, and laundry lines, and watchtowers, and people yelling about stolen potatoes.
The fence still stands.
The gates still lock.
And the world beyond them is still littered with teeth and claws and everything that wants to kill you for simply living.
But inside? Inside is different.
Someone has painted the medical building blue.
A kid is running after a half-feral chicken close to the kitchens.
Two Betas are arguing over where to hang lanterns for tonight’s gathering.
An Omega I recognize from Mercer’s clinic is walking across the yard with her scent uncovered, a knife at her hip, and three friends laughing next to her.
No one stops her.
No one looks away either.
They see her, and that matters.
I sit with my back against the low wall, legs stretched out in front of me, my boot-covered ankles crossed.
My tactical gear doesn’t swallow me whole anymore.
No shapeless jackets, no dead-scent layers, and no pretending my body is an urban legend.
Black leggings. Boots. Fitted black shirt.
A blade strapped to my thigh because as beautiful and pure as healing is, having options feels just as good.
My hair is loose around my shoulders, a matching white-blonde to Maine’s, though mine is far longer and spills in waves everywhere like it’s been waiting seven years to be an official pain in the ass, especially in public.
Pale patches mark my arms, my hands, my neck, the skin disappearing under my clothes.
Vitiligo. Completely visible now and mine to own with pride or fear it might get me killed.
My scent floats through the breeze every time the wind changes direction, wild honey and rain freely floating around me now. Not buried and not panicked. Not hidden under crappy blockers, Betastink, and fear.
It’s still pretty weird, though. Obviously.
Maine dips the brush again. The polish is black, glossy, and perfect. Annoyingly perfect, but the asshole keeps trying to ruin it with glitter.
“You got better at this,” I comment quietly, holding my breath while I keep perfectly still while he’s painting a line of polish at the corner of my nail. One mistake and I’ll have more of it on my skin than nails.
He gives my hand a very careful turn, mindlessly muttering, “Had practice.”
My eyes move to the roses lying beside my boots. They’re not fresh, but they’re not dying either. They’re pressed. Preserved. Seven of them in total, all sealed in a thin wooden frame he built himself. Dark red petals behind glass, soft as a memory that finally learned how not to cut.
The roses he never got to give me.
The ones he carried his guilt in for seven years.
He gave them to me this morning without a speech.
Just stood in the doorway of my room, looking like he might flee his own emotions, and held it out to me.
I called him an idiot, then I cried into his shirt for fourteen minutes like I was sixteen again and needed my brother more than anything in this world.
It was very undignified. Super embarrassing. Would not recommend.
“You’re staring at them again,” he points out a little distractedly as he tries painting my nails without adding more splotches to my skin.
I nod seriously. “I’m checking for spiders.”
“In pressed flowers? Behind glass? Really?”
“Spiders are tricky fuckers, Maine. They adapt,” I tell him like I’m sharing state secrets he should already know.
His mouth twitches. “You like them that much?”
I eye him, then the flowers, then him again. With a nonchalant shrug and a cool once-over, I mutter, “Eh, they’ll do.”
“You sobbed,” he volleys, calling me out for no good reason.
“I was actually dehydrated, you inconsiderate asshole. Have some compassion,” I retort dramatically, shaking my head at him like I’m disappointed.
He pauses his painting. “You bit me when I tried to hug you tighter.”
“Affection dehydration. No cure for it, sorry.”
He laughs, and I love the sound before I can stop myself. A year ago, that laugh would have hurt me too much to hold even with gloves covering my hands. It still hurts now, only differently. Like a healed bone before it rains, or a scar that remembers but doesn’t reopen every time you breathe.
Maine paints my thumbnail next with a ridiculous amount of care.
“You know,” I mutter quietly, trying not to ruin his focus. “You used to do this faster.”
“You used to move less,” he argues.
“I was twelve.”
“You were feral.”
“I was a delight and you know it,” I shoot back, playfully glowering at the dick.
He pauses his painting once more to give me a disbelieving look. “You glued a bottle cap to my pillow.”
“Yeah, and? It gained emotional value,” I point out.
A pale eyebrow raises on his forehead. “It had milk in it.”
I clear my throat so I don’t laugh in his face, instead offering him a very sincere, “Well, now you have a fond and treasured memory to look back on.”
Somewhat menacingly, my brother points the brush at me and warns, “Move again and I’m giving you glitter.”
I freeze. Mostly.
Not a moment later, the roof door bangs open from behind us.
Maine mutters under his breath, “Saved by the pack.”
Ewan appears first, headphones wrapped around his neck, hair wind-tousled and grin already criminal. He steps over toward us and peers down between Maine and me before asking, “Oh, I see. Threatening with glitter?”
“I am,” Maine answers with a single nod, eyeing my thumb like it’s the devil who won’t keep still. Oops.
I lift my unpainted hand at Ewan and mutter, “You’re supposed to be on my side. What the hell?”
Ewan drops beside me and kisses my temple in passing, easy as breathing. “Love, I’m always on your side. I’ll always be on your side. But sometimes your side just needs a little sparkle. And that’s okay.”
“Wow,” I sigh. “Betrayal from the Welsh.”
“Historically speaking, you should have expected it,” he throws back, right before he hands me a small paper packet.
I peer inside. “Oh my god. Is this cake?”
“Stole it from Ellis,” he confirms with a cheeky grin I never tire of seeing.
“She made cake?”
“Nah. She confiscated it from Mercer.”
“Ah.” I nod, smiling down at the sugary goodness now in my possession. “That sounds more believable.”
Mercer has become many things over the past year.
A better doctor, and a worse liar. The man literally can’t lie for shit, and the poor guy really does try.
He’s become quite the constant in my life.
A man who can now say “Dakota, please stop naming the blood samples things like Red Sheeran and Buffy the Blood Sample” without even looking up from his notes.
His research room is full of locked cabinets, consent sheets, color-coded files, and one sign Ellis made after I replaced all of his labels with drawings of dicks in various stages of erection.
THE OMEGA IS NOT YOUR LAB RAT.
Underneath that, in Mercer’s handwriting.
NOR IS SHE ALLOWED TO REORGANIZE MY FREEZER.