Epilogue
AMIRA
The children were safe.
That was the only thought that mattered anymore. The only one my mind had room for. Everything else — the cold cutting through the trees, the blood drying against my side, the sound of people hunting me through the dark — had become secondary.
I watched Patrick’s car disappear down the county road, my treasures in the back seat.
I’d handed him every dollar I had left, given him the name Darius Monroe and the compound’s location, then stood there long after the taillights vanished, because some part of me needed to witness the moment my children moved beyond the facility’s reach.
Then I turned around and walked directly back toward the people chasing me.
Not because I wanted to.
Because they had seen the car.
And if I ran in the same direction as my children, they would not stay hidden for long.
They needed time.
Time required distance. The distance required me.
So I gave the hunters something else to follow.
Reza surged in my chest the second I made the decision. Calm. Focused. Not frantic, as fear wanted me to be. My wolf was going wild with our pups out of reach, but we held on to the idea that their father would keep them safe.
I ran north along the river, away from the compound, away from my babies, away from the man whose name I had written in a letter, as if it were a prayer I wasn’t sure the Moon Goddess would answer.
I had known about Darius Monroe for two years.
Not personally. Men like Darius existed in the files, not in real life. The program cataloged bloodlines the way hunters cataloged weapons — by usefulness, rarity, and the potential they could produce under the right conditions.
And Darius Monroe was considered extremely valuable.
Superior Gamma wolf. Wind elemental. Strong genetic concentration. Optimal pairing potential.
I had read his file so many times that I could recite it by heart.
The program called him a source. Never a person. Never a man. Certainly not someone whose children I would bear.
But on the first morning I realized I was pregnant, my personal emotions were pushed aside. A new emotion overtook them.
Recognition. The children growing inside me belonged to my mate.
Not to the facility. Not to the program.
Mine. His. Ours.
I had never met him. Never heard his voice. I only had a photograph pulled from an old pack registry file and the strange warmth that settled in my chest whenever I looked at it too long.
That warmth kept me alive more nights than I could count.
***
I led them north for six miles before turning east.
There’s a rhythm to being hunted, learned over months: how close the pursuit must feel, when to slow down to maintain confidence, and when to vanish before confidence becomes a mistake.
I used creek beds to mask my scent and dense underbrush to hide from larger hunters. Over time, the terrain became a language; the woods spoke if you knew how to listen.
By midnight, I finally lost them, but I didn’t stop moving. Stopping was a luxury for those who thought they’d survive the night.
I cut south toward the backup route I had mapped three months earlier, when I first accepted the truth: getting to the compound was never a question of if. Only how.
And I had planned for the possibility that I’d arrive broken, bleeding, and alone.
The backwoods route took me through places nobody willingly traveled to anymore — settlements balanced uneasily between pack territory and old law, communities rough enough that the Council stayed out of their affairs.
The first settlement nearly killed me. There were more rogues running wild there than shifters, all hungry for Omegas' heats.
The second was not as bad and allowed me a night of sleep.
I was ready to move through the third.
By dawn on the second day, I was leaning against a tree, blood crusted beneath my shirt. The pain in my left side had faded to numbness, which felt even worse. It seemed as if my ribs were shattered, and my hand could barely close. Reza had used almost all her healing reserves hours earlier.
I thought about my children. Safe at the compound. I thought about the man holding them.
And the warmth came again.
Steady. Certain.
South and east.
Not far now.
I stood up.
And I kept going.