EPILOGUE
Six months later…
After that night, the jagged pieces of my life began to slide into place.
Not perfectly. Some edges still cut when touched too carelessly.
Some wounds still ache when the weather changes.
But for the first time in years, I am happy.
Loved. Cherished. Surrounded by family and friends who choose me every day.
Things are never going to be easy. There is a war brewing on the horizon and too many unanswered questions lurking in the shadows. Enemies don’t disappear just because the head of the snake is severed. They slither deeper, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Nothing in the future is certain.
But for once, that uncertainty doesn’t terrify me.
The trust between the twins and me is not an easy fix.
It isn’t something patched overnight with apologies and promises.
It is rebuilt in stolen kisses over morning coffee, in the way Kiernan reaches for my hand without thinking, in the way Seamus always checks that I’ve eaten when I’m too distracted to notice hunger gnawing at me.
It is rebuilt in honesty. In patience. In choosing one another again and again.
They are also quickly making up for it with the number of orgasms they give me each day.
Sex isn’t our answer for everything, but when we run out of words, when pain knots too tight for language, it becomes the place we go to find each other again. A language of mouths and hands and trust restored in gasps and trembling limbs.
Drew and Brittany are dead.
Good riddance.
“It happened by accident.” Vas shrugs unapologetically from where he lounges across the leather sofa, one ankle hooked over his knee like he isn’t discussing homicide over whiskey.
“He was reaching for something under the covers. Thought it was a .45. Turned out to be his little .22, if you know what I mean.” He winks at me.
“I really wish I didn’t,” I deadpan.
That sends him barking with laughter, loud enough that Ava throws a cushion at his head from across the room. He ducks it easily and grins wider. The man is a menace.
I also know he is lying through his teeth. Drew had been shot more than once and in a few strategic places no accident would ever find.
Ava never seems bothered by his death, but whenever Brittany’s name is spoken in the weeks that follow, she flinches almost imperceptibly. Her smile goes brittle around the edges. I wonder sometimes if she regrets pulling the trigger. If regret and relief can live in the same chest.
Richard Crowe was stabbed in his jail cell.
Repeatedly.
There are no leads on who did it. The papers speculate. Politicians posture. News anchors mourn the tragedy of violence in institutions that thrive on it.
But every time the story runs, I catch the glint of satisfaction in my father’s face.
I know he did it for revenge.
He was the one who started it all, whether by cowardice or greed or selfishness too deep to name.
I wonder if he did it solely for my mother, but when he looks at me now, eyes full of pride and something painfully close to remorse, I know he also did it for me.
To give me peace.
As Crowe’s daughter, I never once felt protected. Never once felt safe.
As Toph Eriksen’s, I feel only love and acceptance.
My new therapist says it is his way of trying to make amends for the things he failed to protect me from before.
She says I need patience with him, because men who carry guilt often mistake control for care.
That he will likely begin displaying an overprotectiveness and possessiveness I have never experienced before.
I am surprisingly okay with that.
It feels good to know someone cares enough to feel those things at all.
Shaking off the thought, I gaze out at the city that gives me more than I ever imagined, even if the seas are stormy getting there. Seattle glitters below in steel and glass, rain-slicked streets catching the light like veins of gold.
It is time I give something back.
Being an investigative reporter was my life. I loved the hunt. The truth dragged screaming into daylight. But there is only so much the written word can do. Some monsters don’t fear exposure. Some only understand force.
Now it is time to take up the mantle of the legacy I was always meant to inherit.
“You ready?” Yelena calls.
I turn and grin. She looks adorable in full leather gear, black helmet adorned with cat ears she glued on herself. She dared anyone to laugh and nearly broke Vas’s nose when he did.
“More than ready.”
I pull my own helmet on and secure the strap beneath my chin before circling one finger in the air.
The roar of engines behind me ignites something primal in my blood. Beneath me, my own bike growls to life.
A new 2021 Indian Scout Bobber Sixty in matte black. Never been ridden.
A gift from my father.
“We ready?” I ask into the comms system.
A chorus of hell yeah answers behind me. Laughter. Cheers. The revving thunder of engines hungry for asphalt.
This is my family. Or at least part of it.
Women who are hurt, damaged, and in need of repair, just like me. Women who survived cages built for them and learned how to sharpen the bars into weapons. Women my mother risked her life to save, and who years later, returned the favor by saving me.
They were all given another chance at freedom because of one woman’s selflessness.
Many were rescued by my mother as children. Raised by club affiliates who taught them strength instead of fear. Some, like Samala, are descendants of survivors. Others, like Yelena, lost mothers in the initial attack and grew up with grief braided into their bones.
The warehouse where the old Vixens club once stood has been torn down.
A new compound rises in its place. Stronger. Cleaner. Built of steel and intention. The bones are similar, but the soul is different.
At the center of the clubhouse, stretching toward the skylight above, a memorial stone rises from the floor. Names are carved into it—those massacred on that fateful day. Daughters. Mothers. Sisters. Fighters.
At the top, with angel wings spread from her back, stands a statue of my mother. Her arms wrap around the stone as if still shielding them.
The inscription reads: Hoc Defendam.
This I will defend.
The world is dark and dangerous. Deception and violence wait in every corner. Men mistake cruelty for power every day.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth defending.
It just means more light is needed in the dark.
Hope is a powerful motivator for the weak and wounded. Prey becomes predator under the right circumstances. Animals beaten into submission only learn patience until the moment comes to bite the hand that holds the whip.
We are a pack of wild things with sharpened teeth, waiting to remind the hunters how dangerous prey can be.
I was beaten once. Bent. Never broken.
Two men put me back together without even realizing they were doing it. Two men became the love and safety I never knew existed.
And I make damn sure other women who survive what I do get the same chance I have.
I will give them hope.
I will give them vengeance.
“Vixens.” I rev my engine, the sound splitting the morning air. “Ride out.”