Epilogue
Clara
“Quick, get ready!” Clara heard Seb say as she made her way up to their front door. “She’s here.”
She frowned as she reached into her purse for her keys.
What on earth was he up to now? In the three months that they’d been together, Seb was constantly surprising her with something or other.
She had no idea what he had planned this time however, although it wasn’t too difficult to hazard a guess seeing as how she’d be leaving the following morning to begin her twenty-week FBI training program in Quantico.
She let herself into their condo and a moment later there was a burst of noise as everyone inside the room shouted “Surprise!”
She pretended to jump and let an expression of shock slide into place on her face before finally smiling at all of their friends. “Aww, you guys, you shouldn’t have!”
When she glanced at Seb, his eyes were narrowed suspiciously. He crossed to her and as everyone in the room began chatting amongst themselves, he leaned into her side. “You knew, didn’t you?”
She grinned up at him. “I heard you as I was arriving.”
Seb rolled his eyes. “Damn shifter hearing.”
Clara chuckled and slid her arms around his waist. “Thank you for my leaving party. I appreciate the gesture.”
Seb heaved a sigh. “Twenty weeks,” he said morosely. “What am I going to do without you?”
“We’ll see each other every weekend,” she promised.
Usually, the recruits at Quantico were only allowed to go home on the weekends if they lived close by—within a five-hour drive.
San Antonio was a twenty-three-hour drive away.
Fortunately, her superiors knew she was a shifter with a mate, so they had relaxed the rule, allowing her to fly back and forth a few times during her training period.
The rest of the time, Seb would come to her.
Being apart from him was going to be one of the hardest things she’d ever been through, but it would be worth it in the end.
She was finally living the life she’d always dreamed of.
She’d been accepted into the FBI, she had a wonderful mate, great friends, and a healthy relationship with her father.
It still saddened her that her mom wasn’t around to see the things she had accomplished in her life, but she tried not to dwell on that and chose to focus instead on all the good things she had going on.
In fact, Clara rarely thought of all the challenging things she had done to get her to where she was today, of how she and Seb had met, or of the initial distrust that had festered between them.
Now that Ortega was rotting in prison and CN-6 had been dismantled, Clara was finally free to live the life she’d always wanted.
“There is one advantage to us spending so much time apart,” she whispered.
Seb frowned. “Yeah, what’s that?”
She grinned and lifted her eyebrows. “We’ll be so excited to see each other, we’ll probably spend the whole weekend in bed.”
Seb’s expression brightened and he gazed around at their friends. “How quickly do you think we can get rid of everyone?”
Clara threw her head back and laughed. “Knowing you? In about five minutes tops.”
He grinned wickedly and she could practically see the cogs turning over in his mind. One thing was for certain, life with Seb would undoubtedly be interesting.
And Clara wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The End