Epilogue - Annabella #3
“I’ll always come back,” I said. “I promise.”
She nodded, satisfied. Then: “Can I make the flowers glow now?”
“Small ones.”
She was off my lap and racing toward the garden before I’d finished the sentence. I watched her skid to a stop beside a patch of wildflowers and shove both hands at them, her face scrunched with concentration.
Light bloomed around the petals. Uncontrolled, bright, spilling out in all directions.
My magic stirred. A pull, low in my chest; my magic and my wolf reaching toward my sister’s power.
Before I’d thought about it, I lifted my hand.
Sent a thread of silver-green toward hers.
Not taking over. Just meeting her halfway.
The two lights tangled together in the wildflowers.
Hers bright and wild, mine steadier. Ellie gasped and looked back at me, her whole face lit up.
“The magic! We match!” she shouted. “Bella, we match!”
I grinned back at her.
I packed while Sam showered. Not much to Pack.
I’d never learned the trick of accumulating things, never stayed in one place long enough for possessions to multiply.
But now Sam’s shirts were mixed in with my tactical gear.
His case files stacked under my books. Ellie’s drawings on his desk in crayon colors that clashed with everything.
The shower cut off. His footsteps crossed the hall. I knew them the way I knew his scent. The bond had burned the information into my brain, and I’d stopped fighting it around month two.
“You’re brooding,” Sam said from the doorway.
“I’m packing.”
“You’re holding the same shirt you picked up before I went for a shower. That’s brooding. Trust me, I’m a professional.”
I looked down. Black tactical shirt. He was right.
“I was thinking about Mina.”
He went quiet. Came up behind me, arms wrapping around my waist, chin hooking over my shoulder.
Three months, and I still didn’t know. Waylen had cleared her. Said there was no proof Kane had gotten the intel about Three Rivers from her.
No proof. No confirmation. Just doubt and silence and the looks people couldn’t quite hide when she walked into a room.
She’d seen it. The questions we wouldn’t ask out loud.
The trust that had cracked even when it shouldn’t have.
She’d packed her things and disappeared a week after she was released. No goodbye. No explanation.
AJ had left the next morning. Back to tracking her down. I hoped he found her. I hoped she was okay. I hoped she was safe and that she’d come back someday. I missed her, and couldn’t help but feel I’d let her down.
Sam’s arms tightened. He didn’t feed me easy comfort. We were past that.
“Zeke sent more flowers yesterday,” he said after a while. “They’re downstairs. Some kind of purple thing. He’s doing good work in Bridgetown. Mason says the greenhouse is impressive and they’re having good results with the medicines Zeke’s creating for the ripple addicts.”
Zeke had stayed. Not everyone left. I held onto that.
“I was thinking, after we set up the new Council, we could go to Adarcan and shut it down.”
I went still.
“We could demolish it. Every wall. Every cell.”
I’d been thinking the same thing for a few weeks now. “We’d need to do an assessment on the prisoners. Most of them could be released. But the others, we’d need to find another solution for them.”
“We can do that.”
I turned in his arms. He let me, adjusting his grip to my waist, thumbs finding the strip of skin between my shirt and my pants. Then his hands slid under my shirt, traced the lines of my ribs. I bit his lip. Felt him grin against my mouth.
“Teeth,” he murmured. “Always with the teeth.”
“Complaining?”
“Never.”
I kissed him again, knowing that the world wasn’t perfect. There was still ripple poisoning communities, still prejudice poisoning minds, still wounds that hadn’t finished healing. Carlito still dead. That didn’t change. That wouldn’t change.
But there was also Mason and Shya expanding their healing center with Zeke’s help. Ryan and Mai raising the next generation with laughter and chaos and bone-deep love. Derek and Sofia proving that broken things could be mended. Wally and Thomas opening their home to children who needed one.
My mother, alive. My sister, fearless.
Sam’s hand warm against my back.
The road was opening ahead of us. New challenges. New fights. New possibilities.
I didn’t know what came next. Three months ago—six months ago—a year ago—that would have terrified me. The uncertainty. The lack of control. The wide-open future with nothing to hide behind.
Now?
I leaned into Sam, let his hands roam upwards until his thumb traced circles on my nipples.
Not peace. The world didn’t give you peace. You had to fight for every inch of ground, every moment of safety, every scrap of joy.
But possibility?
Yeah.
We had that now.
Flames in Stone
A brand new series from Kira Nightingale!
Five brothers. Five mates. One dynasty on fire.
They are the Stones. Five brothers. One dynasty.
And a secret that could burn it all down.
In a world where Shifters walk among us, dragon Shifters are considered myth — and the Stone family intends to keep it that way.
But when fate sends each brother a mate he was never supposed to want, the flames they've kept hidden threaten to consume everything: their empire, their enemies, and the women bold enough to love them.