Epilogue
MAGNUS
Elias Vane looked older than he had last night.
He was still young enough that I could see the boy in the architecture of his face; the not-quite-settled jaw, the eyes that were learning to carry weight they hadn't been built for yet.
But something had changed behind them. Something had been removed and not yet replaced, leaving a space that was still raw at the edges.
He sat across from me at the table with his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee and his shoulders carrying the posture of a man who had woken up the morning after his father's death and realized there was no one left above him in the hierarchy.
No ceiling. No buffer between himself and the full weight of what came next.
I recognized the posture. That weight was waiting for me to step into it. Soon.
"The Vane pack is yours now." I didn't frame it as one. Elias didn't need someone to ease him into the truth. He needed someone to say it plainly and let him find his footing. "The territory, the remaining men, the debts, and the alliances. All of it transfers to you as Alpha."
"What's left of it." Elias huffed as he rubbed the stubble on his chin.
"Enough to build from. Your father ran it into the ground over a decade. That means the damage is structural, not catastrophic. The bones are there."
A beat of silence. He was recalibrating; still getting used to the idea that being connected to the Blackwoods meant that certain information arrived before you asked for it, that certain problems were already half-solved by the time they reached your desk.
I remembered finding that unsettling once.
Now it was simply the texture of how we operated.
"We're allies," I said. "You have the full weight of the Blackwood pack behind you while you rebuild.
Resources, enforcement, political cover with the other families.
The Lupetto situation has been resolved, which removes one variable from your board.
The Volki respect consolidation when it's handled cleanly.
" I paused. "In return, we expect loyalty. Complete and without conditions."
Elias set down his mug. He looked at me steadily; not challenging, just measuring. It was a look I had come to recognize as his baseline, the expression of a young man who had learned early that people usually wanted something and that understanding what it was gave you a fighting chance.
"Can you actually trust me?" he asked. "After everything."
"Yes," I said. "You tried to protect your sister.
With the tools you had and the information you had at the time.
That's not a betrayal; it's family loyalty.
My brother married your sister. That makes us family in the way that matters.
Sometimes family isn't blood; it's a choice.
And in a few years, you'll marry my sister Astrid. "
Elias' mouth opened. Then it closed. He picked up his mug again and stared into the middle distance with the expression of a man rapidly recalculating a future he had believed he had some control over.
"Ma only wants one wedding a year. Addie and Vidar need their society wedding first. The public one, you'll be expected to walk her down the aisle as Vane Alpha."
"O'Shea. The Vane pack is dead. It's the O'Shea pack."
I nodded. "And then there's my wedding to the Lobo pack princess. Which gives you three years to… convince Astrid."
Elias O'Shea sat with that. The fire in the grate shifted and settled, throwing new shadows across the table. Outside the window, the sky had gone the deep, early dark of late autumn.
I stood up and clapped him once on the shoulder. He didn't flinch from it. He straightened under it, slightly, the way young wolves do when an Alpha acknowledges them directly.
He'd be fine. He had the bones for it.
I left him with his coffee and the fire and the long, quiet work of figuring out who he was going to be now that he didn't have a father telling him who he wasn't.
The cabin sat at the western edge of the property, far enough from the main house that the light from the great room didn't reach it.
I had built it myself, in the year after my father told me he was handing the title over to me soon.
I understood for the first time that I needed a place that was entirely mine — not the family house, not the office in the city, not the neutral ground of the pack rooms. Mine.
I drove the perimeter road in the dark and parked in the gravel beside the oak I had planted the year it was finished. Through the cabin window, orange light moved. The fire I had set before I left that morning, banked low and steady, the kind that kept a room warm without asking for attention.
I went inside. The warmth hit me at the door, and underneath it, her scent.
My wolf went still.
Not calm — still. It had been doing this since the moment I picked up Nell Odhiambo after she'd fainted in the park. I'd given her something to keep her out for the journey. I was supposed to put her on a plane to Alaska at my brother's request. Instead, I'd brought her here.
I stood in the doorway of my own cabin and breathed.
She smelled like incense and vanilla. I'd never had a sweet tooth, but my teeth ached as the scent invaded my nostrils and lodged in my throat.
The room was dark except for the thin line of light from the hallway falling across the floor.
Nell was asleep in the center of the bed, on her side, her locs spread across the pillow, one hand curled near her face.
She was still in the clothes she'd been in when she fainted earlier.
I hadn't wanted to disturb her while the shock worked through her system.
I stood in the doorway and looked at her sleeping, and took another long, slow breath through my nose.
The scent of her moved through me like a tide going out, taking the tension of the day with it, the weight of the pack politics and the Vane alliance and the looming calendar of obligations that stretched out ahead of me in an orderly, pre-negotiated line.
All of it receded. What was left was the fire at my back and the sound of her breathing.
My wolf settled. We would play with her soon. She would be the last one before I settled into the life my parents had planned for me, before I met my fiancée for the first time and we made it official. I would be the dutiful son. I would be my father's perfect heir. I would be a doting husband.
Tomorrow. Tonight, I wanted to play with the new toy that no one would be looking for.
I pulled the door closed.
I locked it.
I put the key in my pocket and went back to the fire.
Don’t miss Magnus and Nell’s explosive union
in Merciless Heir
Book Two in the Merciless Alpha’s saga.