Epilogue
Denne walked into a hospital room that was at once perfectly ordinary and utterly extraordinary.
The former was because the four walls and a ceiling were pretty standard issue: There was all kinds of medical equipment punctuating the space, and a wide-doored bathroom off in the corner, and a pale tiled floor that was cleaned to a dinner plate standard.
What was a little unusual was that a second bed had been rolled in, and parked parallel next to the first.
And that was part and parcel of what was extraordinary.
She was quiet as she tiptoed in, the concert of beeping from the monitors her metronome, her eyes tearing up so much that she had to brush them with the backs of her hands.
When she was standing in between the patients, she looked to her mother first and was not surprised to find that the Shadow Queen had her head turned to the right.
So that even though her eyes were closed, she was facing her mate.
iAm was, of course, in exactly the same position on his own pillow.
Denne glanced at all their vitals readouts, the screens like little electronic thought balloons offering commentary on their most critical bodily functions. No alarms were going off, and she measured the trailing heart graphs as if she had a fucking clue what she was looking at.
All the numbers scared her, although that was her mood rather than whatever was going on. Was their oxygen 120? And their heart rate 72?
Maybe that was their blood pressure—
“Denne…?”
Turning toward her mother’s voice in shock, Denne put her arms out and sank into her thighs. As if the female was going to spontaneously thrash herself off the bed and onto the floor, crashing like a mirror dropped on concrete.
“Mama?”
By some absolute miracle, those beautiful black eyes were not only open, they were focused. “Are you… okay…”
Snapping back from the wave of panic, Denne rushed over and took the Queen’s hand. “I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine.”
Well, that was a little bit of an overstatement. She had a limp, and some low-level burns from where the explosion had toasted her back. But compared to being shot or stabbed? She was ready to run a marathon.
On that note, she glanced down at the Queen’s stomach area, and felt so much rage, she wanted to kill t’On all over again.
From what she’d been told, the operation that had saved Catra’s life had been a nick-of-time kind of thing, performed in the dome, on that black glossy floor.
A healer named Jane—who she had later learned was Al’s wonderful mahmen—had been assisted by a nurse named Ehlena.
Together, the females had somehow managed to repair the damage done by the stabbing.
“Are you in pain?” Denne asked. “Should I get Doc Jane?”
She was completely unsurprised as her mother’s eyes shot to the right. “Is your father…”
“He’s going to pull through—the doctors said he was very lucky.” If you could consider being shot in the fucking chest winning a scratch-off. “The bullet punctured his lung, but missed his heart and any big arteries or veins.”
The relief the Queen felt immediately registered on her monitor, some numbers dipping down, others going up, the little graph thing tracking the heart rate easing until there was a full inch between the steady peaks.
“It was… t’On,” Catra said roughly. “All along.”
“I know,” Denne gritted.
“Your father… found papers left in our quarters. He was selling all our land… to humans. He came looking to kill us…”
“Shh.” Denne leaned in and stroked a tear from her mother’s cheek. “There’s time to talk later. Just rest now—”
“What did you do to him.”
That voice was commanding now, the eyes very direct in a way that belied the fact that the Queen was hooked up to IVs and recovering from a very serious knife wound.
And Denne instantly regressed to being a young again, proof, she supposed, that you were every age you’d ever been—and when a parent gave you that I’m-not-messing-around routine, your inner five-year-old still came to attention.
And as the demand lingered between them, she thought back to the young woman in the blue silk dress and realized something about herself: She was a protector and a defender by nature, and while that resonated in her soul, it was one more connection she was finding to the world around her.
She kept this up and she was going to have quite a meaningful fucking life, wasn’t she.
“I took care of it, Mama.” She squeezed the hand that was so much like her own. “That’s all you need to know.”
She’d also turned a perfectly nice glass mansion on the Hudson River into a fireball, but details, details. She could only imagine what the human media was saying about what had happened down by the waterway.
Directly across from where they’d found that dead two-bit gangster.
Conspiracy theorists on the internet were probably going to have a field day, even though they wouldn’t come close to the truth, would they.
But sure as shit, she was going to watch the Netflix documentary when it came out.
Catra shook her head slowly. “You shouldn’t have done that—”
“No one… could have stopped her.”
Denne pulled another torso twist, and felt a fresh wave of relief—that promptly escorted in the kind of shaky aftermath that happened when a semi near-missed you on the highway.
iAm was awake, too, and as soon as he looked at his shellan and his daughter, he started trying to get up. This sent his monitor into a tailspin, all kinds of flashing and beeping going haywire.
“Whoa, whoa—” Denne rushed around and carefully eased his shoulders back down on the bed. “Easy, you’re okay.”
“Worried… about the two… of you…”
Her father’s eyes closed and his face tightened with pain. But neither lasted. As the alarms quieted, his body was clearly able to re-regulate quickly. Good thing, because her next move was going to be running out of the room and screaming for a doctor.
Leaning over him, Denne carefully draped herself across his chest. As she hugged her father like he was fragile, he managed to lift his arms enough to cup her elbows.
From what she understood from the doctors, both her parents were going to make a full recovery, but she was not confused.
Without what the Brotherhood’s healers had done, she would have lost them—
Behind her, the door opened with a burst.
“Uncle Trez,” she said with a smile. “Look who’s awake.”
Her father’s brother came rushing in, filling the space with his presence. And there was someone else with him—
“Aunt Therese!” Riding a wave of pure happiness, Denne got up and went to the female. “You came!”
So night must have fallen.
As they embraced, she caught a glimpse over Therese’s shoulder at the enormous male out in the corridor.
s’Ex, the Queen’s executioner, was leaning back against the concrete wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his brows down on his gleaming black eyes.
Dressed in a black robe, and with his white tattoos covered, he looked ready to fight, even though there were no immediate threats anywhere around him.
And she dimly reflected that there were plenty of weapons on under those folds. It was such a testament to what the Black Dagger Brotherhood thought of him and the Shadows as a whole that the executioner was allowed to bear them here in this underground facility.
s’Ex didn’t return her smile.
“They’re awake,” Denne said to him as she held the door open with her foot. Like he might not have heard, though.
s’Ex merely inclined his regal head in acknowledgment of her words. And even so, as she turned back to the reunion that was going on at the hospital beds, she glanced at him one more time.
His eyes had shifted to the royal patients. As a brief flare of pain tightened his stoic features, that was when she knew he wasn’t going to leave Caldwell. He’d been out west with her aunt and uncle since they’d moved, but that was clearly going to change.
After murmuring to everybody, she slipped from the room, and waited until the door shut. “This is not your fault.”
As that hard stare returned to her, she would have taken a step away if she weren’t already against the heavy panel that had just closed.
Not that s’Ex would ever harm her. It was more the intensity of the male.
“You should go back inside,” he said in his deep, accented voice. “Your parents live for you.”
“And I for them.”
He inclined his head again, obviously just to be polite.
And then he went back to staring at the door.
The fact that this honorable male was hurting made her fury at t’On spike all over again.
There was nothing she could say to s’Ex to make things better, though.
And then her attention was captured by something else.
Someone else(s).
Farther down the hallway, Al stepped out of what she’d learned was the break room.
With him were Doc Jane and Vishous, and the three of them were in some kind of conversation, their heads forming a knot as the Brother took two cigarettes out of the inside of the leather jacket he had on.
As he passed one to Al, Al brought forward a red Bic lighter and flicked up a flame.
He lit his father’s first, and then his own.
It was as he exhaled that he glanced her way. When his eyes flared as if he were surprised she was outside the room, she gave him two thumbs up.
“They’re awake,” she announced.
The trio sped up and Al was the first to reach her. As he gathered her into his arms, she took a deep breath. Turkish tobacco. The dark spices of his bonding for her. The faint whiff of the shampoo he’d used in the locker room and the aftershave he’d borrowed from his father.
As they eased back, his pale blue eyes traveled around her face like he was memorizing what she looked like yet again. In reality, he was probably just checking to make sure she was all right.
The answer was yes, she was.
Fucking hell, she was so much better after she’d been able to speak with both her parents.
“Just moments ago,” she said to him as Vishous and Jane went into the room. “They woke up… just now.”