EPILOGUE 6
EZLA
“I do” was not at all hard to say last night. Neither were my promises to kill anyone who even thinks to harm a single one of my Bonds. It was not difficult in the slightest to bind myself further to the men who freed me from more chains than I even knew I wore.
Never in my life have I felt this contentment, this peace and happiness.
Scotty’s warm torso is pressed tightly to my back as he and the rest of my men sleep peacefully after our night together.
His arm is wrapped securely around me, and I can feel each steady rise and fall of his chest as I hold on to his forearm.
My other hand is buried in Tiger’s thick golden locks, his bare body pressed to my front.
I cannot fully describe the feeling I get every time I wake up like this, every time I process the fact that the men whose arms are around me do not belong to him, the living parasite I once called Father.
In the four months since the Games I was bonded in, I have grown more confident with all these new emotions and sensations inside of me, but I still cannot identify everything, yet I suppose I would call this .
. . light, in the simplest way possible.
The air does not feel too thin or too thick, nor is there any woody black pepper in it.
There is no nothingness or what would otherwise be revulsion, agony, and a crushing rage that I could not always bear the weight of. All that is here is them. My men.
When they first claimed me, I believed they had stolen my freedom.
They had completely ruined my plans, and so I had to make new ones.
New ones that led me here, to the realisation that they did not steal my freedom at all, but help me find it.
They dragged my heart from me along the way, and yet I am not mad that they have taken it and will not be giving it back, just as I would not let them take theirs back in the impossible reality they dared try to.
We belong to each other.
Fingers twitch on my leg, and my eyes whip down to the tanned hand on it before snapping back up when Cooper’s face appears behind Tiger’s. “Vengeance.” His voice is roughened from sleep, dark hair tousled, and my entire body tingles.
“Husband,” I reply evenly, and his mouth breaks into a lazy grin, russet eyes sparkling. He and the others seem to be smiling nonstop lately, and it does strange things to the seemingly not-so-black organ in my chest.
Propped up on his right arm, the hand on my leg which rests over Tiger’s hip beneath the silk sheets of our Bonded bed rubs up and down. “Fuck, that sounds amazing.”
The corner of my mouth lifts.
Love pours from him heavily as he carefully leans over Tiger so as not to wake him, and there is nothing within me that revolts at the emotion as his mouth slants over mine, his hand coming up to cup the back of my neck.
Joseph tainted my previous understanding of it, but it is not so skewed anymore.
He does not have any control over me, and any lingering mental chains have been torn apart over the weeks.
Any ties to him are gone. I am not his creation; I am my own.
I am no longer the little girl who cannot escape a weak man’s twisted desires.
I no longer have his Avri in my face, only Cooper’s harmless energy.
I no longer have a last name, as I refuse to keep going by his, and I would not choose any one of my Bonds’ over another.
I am simply Ezla, empress of a region I have made a better place for the men who taught me what real love is. And I am happy.