Epilogue
ZANE
W alking into the meeting, I felt strange. Everything about me was the same, and yet, my life had been twisted inside out and left upside down. I had been captured and bound, stripped apart and put back together again. And somehow, I had come out of it bound to the only Wolf I had ever wanted to fall for.
I wouldn’t have even bothered showing up to the meeting. Waking up naked, smelling my seed dribbling out of Orion’s loose hole, all I wanted was to fuck him again. Then again. And then one more time.
Then I wanted to spend the day feeding him and holding him and making him come until he had nothing left to spend.
And I wanted to spend the rest of my life just like that.
But we were at war, and bond or no, I had an obligation. I was still petrified of taking up the position as Head Alpha. It was only a matter of time before all of the shit hit every single fan across the world. With Kor and Misha being used as scapegoats, we predicted the eyes turning on Corland in a matter of weeks.
So far, the humans were keeping quiet about everything. The only announcement they’d made was that Kasher was running for office, and that he was attempting to disband the Wolf government and create one system of power for everyone. The world was quietly murmuring behind their computer and TV screens. The media was on edge, waiting for the next announcement.
And all across the globe, militaries were starting to prepare for another wave of attacks.
I closed my eyes and felt for Orion. He was now heading up security in Corland, and he was starting with the current residents. I hadn’t yet spoken to the rest of the Council about my suspicions, but Orion and I were both on the same page.
Sanderson had just been the start, and it was likely we had more just like him, lying in wait, waiting to strike when we seemed most vulnerable.
I felt Orion send me a pulse of affection, and I sent one back before I turned my attention to my task at hand. I could hear the heartbeats of the other Alphas inside, and I squared my shoulders before walking in.
Theo and Francisco were seated on the far side of the room, talking quietly. I was unsurprised to find Aisling not sitting with them, but the former hostility had ebbed a little, and it made me breathe a little easier. I met their gazes, then rolled my eyes when Theo waggled his brows at me.
“Not the time,” I snapped.
He laughed, though the sound was a little tense as he pushed to his feet. “No better way to heal up than a good romp in the woods, right?”
Francisco knocked his elbow into his husband, then joined him as they came closer. “You bonded?”
“We did, but we’re not making a public announcement,” I confessed. Orion and I had talked about it at length, and we decided if the public decided to turn on me, we still needed them to trust him. We wouldn’t hide it, of course, but the less attention we got, the better.
The other Alphas seemed to understand, and even Aisling, who was a stranger, gave me a nod of solidarity.
“Well, we have news,” Theo said after a beat. “We’ve gotten a message from Mikael.”
My heart began to thud. “And?”
“He has a lead on Danyal, along with several other Wolves, and they’re in Europe,” he answered, then swallowed thickly.
I swore under my breath. “How many?”
“He has no idea. He managed to…convince a human to give up some information,” he said, and I shuddered to think about the tactics he used—though I found myself struggling to condemn him at this point. “This shit isn’t in those files Orion sprung from ComTech. This is brand new and everything to do with Misha’s dad.”
“Has Kor checked in?” I asked.
“Just a text. He says they’re following a lead right now and for us to hold steady for as long as we can.” Theo dragged a hand down his face, then looked over at Aisling before he spoke again. “Aisling proposed that we sit on any action until our hand is forced.”
“But,” she said, stepping forward, “if our government decides to announce a bid to run against Alexei Kasher, we may need to do something.”
“I’m not opposed to having a government with our interests in mind, but not them,” Francisco added.
“We all know that’s what Kor went after, right?” I said. He hadn’t given us his plans, but he was also not the most subtle of Wolves.
“That’s what we’re assuming, and we just hope he comes up with something soon,” Theo said.
I nodded, then leaned back against the table and crossed my arms. “What else did Mikael say?”
“That he doesn’t think Danyal’s being hurt, but I told him that you and Talia were already pretty sure of that,” Francisco answered. “He thinks that could change soon, though, if Danyal won’t cooperate.”
I wanted to argue, but I was starting to feel fatigue. The distance in the bond was starting to strain it, and Talia had been exhausted when trying to reach him through it over dinner the night before.
“He’s following?” I asked.
Theo nodded. “He thinks he’s close, but he won’t be able to risk contacting us much in the coming weeks.”
Weeks. I fucking hated how long it was taking. They might not be hurting him, but the gods only knew what else they were capable of. Danyal was one of the strongest Wolves I had ever known, but I also knew we could only hold up under so much of the humans’ tender loving care .
“I want to be out there,” I snapped.
“We know,” Aisling said gently, “but you won’t do him any good by running off like that. We need you here.”
It didn’t feel like it, especially if we were just sitting with our thumbs up our asses waiting to hear something from the government, or from Kor, or from Mikael. But I knew they were right. This was going to be a test of patience, and the ones who waited longest to act would have the clearer path to victory.
“Any word from Nadya?”
At that, Francisco pulled out his phone, tapped the screen, then offered it over. There was a single message waiting without a return number attached:
2 days.
It could only mean one thing. “She’s coming here, isn’t she?” I asked.
Theo let out a short breath. “We think so. I trust she’ll make it over the border without being followed, but she’s going to have to go deep underground.”
“The caves,” Francisco said. “Theo and I managed to hide out there for a short while during the First War, and it won’t be comfortable, but it’ll be safe enough.”
I grimaced. I had never met her, but she had done everything in her power—including risk her own life—to get Orion to safety. And because of that, he’d managed to rescue me and bring me back to something like the Wolf I was. We owed her.
“We’ll do whatever we need to in order to keep her safe and comfortable,” I said. I checked the time, then looked over out the window. There was little for the Council to do until Orion was done with his work, but the moment that part fell in our laps, we wouldn’t have space to breathe again.
Not for a long while.
“Now we wait?” Aisling eventually asked.
I offered her a half smile and shrugged. “Now we wait.”
Around noon, Orion was hurt. I felt the sharpness of it in the bond, hard enough to send me to my knees and knock the breath out of my lungs. I was in my office, so no one was around to witness it, but panic set in, and if it hadn’t been for Orion sending me a pulse that he was okay, I would have gone tearing across the city to find him.
As it was, I wasn’t sure where his security team had set up their quarters. The Council would eventually know, but for now, it was better to keep it quiet. The four of us were close, but not close enough to have kept tabs on who we’d all gotten close to since moving to Corland, and it was very likely that Wolves in our inner circles were the very ones Orion was searching for.
My only saving grace was that I had been a recluse. I had kept to my family and no one else, and while I knew Orion would do his job and interrogate both Cameron and Talia, I wasn’t overly worried about them betraying our cause.
But the others…it terrified me, how much we didn’t know. I was meant to take up Kor’s position, and I hadn’t realized how heavy his crown was until the others started coming to me for direction. I had no idea how to move forward, and if our government decided to announce a bid in the election, I had no idea what to tell my people.
We couldn’t wait on Kor forever, and I wasn’t sure Nadya had any information with her that would make a difference.
It was harder to distract myself now that I could feel ebbs and flows of Orion’s injury, but I did what I could to go about my day. I left the office around four, stopped to restock our tiny little kitchen, then went over to Talia’s.
She was sitting on the sofa with my niece on her knee, and the tiny Wolf grinned at me with her big blue eyes, her little hands reaching for me.
I had never been one for children, which wasn’t common amongst Wolves since they were so rare, but something about her little face had captured my heart the moment she was placed in my arms for the first time. I kept Talia and her family at a distance—an old habit to protect my heart from loss, but now that the First War had ended, I allowed myself small pieces of indulgence.
“Hello to you,” I said, lifting her into my arms. She squirmed and kicked her legs for a moment before she settled against me.
Talia gave me a grateful sigh and rubbed at her eyes. “She’s teething still, and I honestly don’t know if I’m ever going to sleep again.”
That much was obvious by the way Elizabeth latched onto my knuckle and began to gum at it. I could feel the very first blunt teeth trying to break through her bottom gums, and I rubbed down a little harder, feeling her rumble in contentment.
“How about a nap?”
Talia stared at me. “You’re serious?”
I rolled my eyes, then flopped onto the sofa with Elizabeth’s tiny back resting against my broad chest. “Absolutely serious. I don’t know when Orion’s getting back in. He was hurt today.”
“I felt it,” Talia said, and when I shot her a look, she shoved at my knee, making Elizabeth laugh round my finger. “Don’t look so surprised. You two are bonded. He’s pack.”
I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear that, but my heart quieted, and I breathed a little easier. “I don’t think it’s serious.”
“He would have come home if it was. Cameron said he heard gunfire though, at the far west of town. If that’s where they’re…doing their thing, they might want to consider moving.”
My gut twisted, but I reminded myself that Orion knew what he was doing—probably more than other Wolves did. “I’ll run the suggestion by him,” I said dryly. “Now fuck off and get some sleep.”
“Please don’t swear in front of her yet. She’s a sponge.” Talia’s yawn made her jaw crack, and she shuffled off a moment later, her bedroom door closing with a soft click.
When the pup and I were alone, I stared down at her and rubbed my fingers through her baby-soft curls. I wondered what kind of Wolf she’d be when she grew up. Dark like my sister, probably—sleek and fast and dangerous. I had a feeling her eyes would flash yellow long before she was tested by battle, and I held her a little tighter, realizing she was who we were saving the world for.
Not us—the war-torn, beaten-down shells that managed to scrape out some sort of existence when the violence finally stopped. No, it was for them—the ones who never tasted blood, who never had to watch a life flow from another being’s eyes.
We had to stop this before it began. We couldn’t let it happen again.
She squirmed a little more, then let out a small belch. Her diaper felt heavy, so I shuffled to the ground, then laid her out and grabbed the changing bag Talia always had on hand. Never in my life had I ever thought I’d get good at something like this, but being allowed to have time with Elizabeth changed things.
I still didn’t necessarily want this with Orion, but the idea also didn’t repel me. Not that I thought we’d get the chance. Even at the height of war, there weren’t a lot of orphans up for adoption. And surrogates were even more rare…but it might be something worth looking into, the moment we could truly breathe free again.
Elizabeth squirmed and sucked on her fist, so I picked her up and moved into the kitchen. She wasn’t on food yet, but Talia had a bottle waiting, so I poured a bag of milk in, then slipped it into the warmer. The moment she saw it, she began to fuss, so I bounced her on my shoulder until the light turned green.
She sucked at it like she’d never been fed before, and then curled her little fingers around mine, looking me right in the eye as she ate.
“Now that is something I didn’t think I’d ever see,” came a voice from the doorway.
I spun almost too fast, and righted myself before I made Elizabeth sick. My gaze fixed hard on my mate, who looked no worse for the wear, apart from a healing claw mark across the left side of his face.
“Who was it?” I asked darkly.
He sighed and picked at one of the scabs before he dropped his hand and walked over to lean on the counter. “One of the security team. It was my fault…I still wasn’t being careful enough. He kept proposing that we start offering a reward to the residents for turning in people for suspicious behavior.”
My stomach immediately clenched, because I had seen where shit like that went. Before Wolves came out, huge limbs on my family tree had been ripped apart and murdered by people who thought they were just doing the right thing.
“That’s going down a dangerous road,” I warned.
Orion shook his head. “Oh, I know. But he was really…aggressive. He got into it with Michelson and the next thing you know, he was screaming about us following some castrated Wolf and we needed to realize what we were doing. We took him down, but not before he got me.”
I closed my eyes and rocked Elizabeth from side to side as she got heavier in my arms with impending sleep. “This is going to be a bloody mess, isn’t it?”
“Both literally and figuratively,” he admitted. After a beat, he shuffled over and wrapped his arms around me, hooking his chin on my shoulder. “Anyone ever tell you that you look good like this.”
I scoffed. “Don’t get any ideas. Even if we could figure out how to have a kid…”
“I know,” he said very quietly. “It wasn’t really ever on the agenda. I just…I just like seeing you this way. Soft. Powerful. In love.”
Sometimes it was hard to not feel overwhelmed by the bond, but in this moment, I wanted it. I looked down at Elizabeth and found her fast asleep, so I let Orion trail me into the living room where I set her in her swing, buckled her in, then set it to a gentle rock. She stirred a little, then stilled, and I took a step back into his waiting arms.
“We have a lot coming at us in a short time,” I told him, tilting his chin up. It was too easy to get lost in kissing him, and I indulged in it for a long moment. “I just want to enjoy this while I can.”
His hands drifted down to cup my ass, and he laughed when I shot him a little growl. “I’m totally on board.”
“Don’t be perverted in front of the baby,” I scolded, but I let him drag me to the sofa and wrap around me. I was going to let Talia sleep for at least a few hours, so I couldn’t drag Orion back to our little apartment the way I wanted. But there would be time enough for that later.
For now, there was this.
There was a moment of peace, in spite of the heavy burden still wrapped around me. And maybe we would die before we saw the actual end, or maybe there was some miracle out there waiting for us. But I knew I was willing to fight for the chance—to die for it.
And I knew, as I looked into his orange-streaked eyes, that every choice had led me here. So none of them had been the wrong one.