Epilogue
ANYA
Four Years Later
It’s Kael’s fourth birthday, and I’m balancing a tray of cupcakes in my hands as I navigate the backyard carefully, which is full of young children.
The garden has been transformed into something that can only be described as a birthday explosion. Every surface is draped in blue and gold, and so many balloon clusters are floating above the patio tables.
A custom cake sits on a table against the far wall, three tiers tall and painted with little wolves mid-howl, easily the size of a small car.
Marcus spent four days on that cake. He also, over the past month, single-handedly constructed a miniature playground in the corner of the yard.
No contractor. No instructions. Just Marcus in the yard every evening after work, sawdust on his forearms, completely at peace.
Something grabs the hem of my sundress— two somethings, actually. I look down, and there are my twin girls, both of them staring up at me with those wide eyes.
Ellie and Rose are two years old, dressed in matching white dresses with gold glitter at the hems. They look like two tiny princesses, but right now, both of them look panicked.
I crouch down to their level, knees sinking into the soft grass. “Hey, hey. What’s wrong, my loves?”
Rose doesn’t say anything. She just lifts one small, shaking finger and points across the yard, her face a picture of absolute betrayal.
“Him scary.”
I follow her finger to the clown.
He’s perfectly normal-looking, as clowns go. Colorful outfit, floppy shoes, a bouquet of balloon animals in one hand. He’s currently making a poodle for one of the pack pups, who is delighted. But Rose looks like she’s just spotted something from a horror movie.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I say, holding back a laugh. “He’s harmless, I promise. He makes balloons and…”
Then she suddenly burst into tears, with her twin about to follow.
And then Ryker is there, appearing from nowhere the way he always does, his massive frame crouching beside me. He scoops Rose up in one arm, her chubby fingers immediately grabbing at his shirt.
“What did Mommy do?” he says gravely, rubbing her back while cutting me a deeply amused look over her head.
“Mommy did nothing,” I say flatly. “Mommy was literally handing out cupcakes.”
“Mmm.” He makes a skeptical noise, pressing his lips to Rose’s curls. “It’s okay, little wolf. Daddy’s got you.” Rose sniffles against his chest, and Ellie, not wanting to be left out, wraps herself around my knee like a barnacle.
“Who hired the clown?” I ask, looking around.
“I did,” says Alaric, stepping out from behind the food table, holding a bottle of sparkling water, his expression entirely serene. “I thought it was a wonderful idea.”
I stare at him. “We could have had a birthday party without the clown.”
“Kael loves them.” He gestures across the yard without looking. “See?”
I turn. Kael, my son, my storm-born boy with his dark hair and his father’s stubborn jaw, is standing three feet from the clown, bent double with laughter.
The clown makes a balloon disappear, and Kael absolutely loses his mind, shrieking with delight, both small fists pressed to his cheeks.
He is already covered in blue frosting. There is frosting on his ear, too, somehow.
“Okay,” I concede. “I guess you’re right.”
Alaric smiles, that rare full smile that still makes my stomach flip, and crouches down to Ellie. “Come here, little star.”
She releases my knee and lifts her arms immediately, because whatever grudge she had with the clown situation is apparently resolved now that Daddy has appeared. He swings her up and holds her above his head, her gold-glitter dress catching the afternoon light, and she shrieks with laughter.
“Look at this dress,” Alaric says, turning her so she catches the sun. “Your mother really outdid herself.”
“They were non-negotiable,” I say. “The glitter matched the whole theme of the party.”
Ryker is still swaying with Rose, who has calmed to quiet hiccups against his shoulder, his phone appearing in his free hand so he can film Kael attempting to help the clown with his next trick.
Across the yard, Rex is sitting cross-legged on the grass with three pack pups crawling over him like he’s a jungle gym.
Rose had migrated to him earlier and apparently decided his red spiky hair was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen in her life.
He’d let her pull it for twenty solid minutes without a single complaint, his green eyes bright and laughing as she tugged with her whole body weight.
John is at the snack table, deep in conversation with one of the other pack fathers, looking absolutely at home in the linen shirt he probably borrowed from one of the alphas.
Somehow, in the past four years, he’s gone from sleeping on a secondhand couch and working odd jobs to running the resort’s marketing department half the year and living in a studio on the island the other half.
My mother finds me on the patio as I watch the sunset, while the party dies down.
She has Kael in her arms. He’s finally crashed, his dark head heavy on her shoulder, his fist still clutching a half-eaten cupcake. His mouth is covered with blue frosting. He looks utterly perfect.
“I count fourteen children and somehow only four balloons not attached to anything,” she says, sitting beside me.
I laugh softly, careful not to wake him. “We ordered a hundred balloons. I don’t know where the ninety-six went.”
She presses a kiss to Kael’s hair, her eyes soft. We sit in comfortable silence for a while, watching the yard slowly wind down— fathers corralling their pups, the clown packing up his kit, Rex finally persuading Rose that his hair could survive the evening without further assistance.
The guests begin filtering out not long after, full of cake and warmth. I stand by the door, trading hugs and telling pack pups they’re very welcome to come back any time. By the time the garden is just us and the remains of a party wildly beyond its occasion, the sun is properly starting to set.
“Goodbye! Thank you for coming and celebrating Kael’s birthday with us,” I say to the guests from Kael’s daycare and their parents.
My mother appears beside me with her purse over one shoulder and a very sleepy Kael still draped on the other, Ellie clutching her hand, Rose already reaching up to be carried.
“I’m taking them for the night,” she says, in a tone that makes it very clear this is not up for discussion. “I can watch them for one night. Have some time with your husbands. The bond is important.”
I open my mouth, and she fixes me with a look.
“Thank you,” I say instead.
I lean down and kiss Ellie’s cheek, then Rose’s, smoothing their curls back from their faces. “You are going to be good for Grandma,” I tell them seriously. “No tantrums. No pretending to be scared of the dark so you can sleep in her bed.”
Rose gives me an angelic look that fools absolutely nobody.
I press my lips to Kael’s forehead, careful not to wake him, breathing in his warm sugary smell for a long moment. “Happy birthday, baby boy,” I murmur against his hair.
I stand at the patio door and watch my mother carry my children down the path toward her little cottage at the edge of the beach, the girls’ glittery hems catching the last light. I watch until they disappear around the hedge.
Then I exhale, for what feels like the first time all day.
Later that night, my alphas had prepared a romantic dinner at the beach for us. They’ve strung hurricane lanterns all the way down the stone steps to the beach, so the whole path glows amber in the dusk, warm light pooling in each glass globe as the ocean breeze moves through them.
I stand on top of the stairs leading to the beach, surprised by how beautiful everything looks.
The resort’s head chef is working quietly at a portable kitchen set up just off to one side, the smell of something extraordinary drifting up on the warm air— garlic, butter, something rich and slow-cooked. The ocean stretches out beyond it all, the last blush of sunset still faint on the horizon.
“You did all of this,” I say.
“For you, baby,” Lorenzo says from behind me, his hands landing warm on my shoulders, steering me gently toward the stairs. “Do you like it?”
“Of course I do, oh my god.”
We eat for two hours, and it’s the most relaxed I’ve been in longer than I can remember.
I drink a full glass of white wine at a pace that is not hurried by a single small person. At one point, I laugh so hard at something Rex says that I have to press my napkin to my face, and when I look up, all five of them are watching me with smiles on their faces.
“Gifts,” Rex announces when the plates are cleared, rubbing his hands together.
Lorenzo reaches under his chair and pulls out a flat, cloth-covered package, sliding it across the table to me.
I open it carefully and find a photo album.
It’s thick and heavy, every page filled with photographs I didn’t know he was taking.
There’s one of Kael at six months old, asleep on Marcus’s chest, both of them with their mouths slightly open.
There are the twins at their first Christmas, Rose wearing a bow bigger than her head.
There’s one of me and my mother on her cottage porch, not posed, just talking, the ocean behind us, and I don’t even remember Lorenzo being nearby that day.
“Wow,” I say, feeling warm inside and shocked that he did this.
“I started it last January,” he says, watching my face as I turn the pages. “Figured someone should be actually capturing things.”
“I don’t have words. This is amazing.”
He smiles that warm, slow smile. “Glad you like it.”