Epilogue
KOR
I don't think I've ever been happier in my life.
Not when I inherited my father's construction company…
not when I graduated college…not even when I won my first Alpha Challenge and proved I could stand on my own two feet.
None of those moments came close to the simple happiness I feel every morning when I wake up beside Vivienne and reach across the bed to find her warm and soft beside me.
The funny thing is that if you'd told me a year ago that I would end up living in Colorado with a beautiful woman ten years older than me, I probably would have laughed.
If you'd told me she would be my soul-mate—the one woman in the entire world who could touch my heart and make me feel whole—I would have called you crazy.
But life has a funny way of giving you exactly what you need instead of what you think you want.
Vivienne is everything to me.
She’s my best friend, my partner, my mate, and the love of my life.
Every day I find some new reason to fall in love with her all over again.
Sometimes it’s the way she laughs when I say something stupid.
Sometimes it was the way she curls against me at night, seeking my warmth even in her sleep.
And sometimes it’s just the sight of her sitting on the porch of our little mountain home with a book in her lap and the sunlight turning her dark hair to fiery silk.
After everything we'd been through together, I still find myself looking at her and wondering how I got so lucky. And believe it or not, recently I got even luckier. I’m talking, of course, about the doctor’s appointment we went to the other day.
We'd gone in for a routine ultrasound, just to check and be sure the baby was growing properly.
Vivienne had squeezed my hand while the technologist moved the wand over her swollen belly and we'd both watched the screen eagerly.
I remember thinking how incredible it was that our child was growing inside her.
After everything we'd endured to be together, it felt like a miracle.
Then the technologist frowned—not an unhappy frown, a confused one.
I felt Vivienne tense beside me.
"Is something wrong?" she asked immediately.
The technologist blinked and then smiled.
"Oh no. Nothing's wrong." She pointed to the screen. "Actually, everything looks perfect."
Vivienne squeezed my hand harder.
"Then what is it?" she demanded. “You made a face—I saw you!”
The technologist laughed.
"Well, for starters, you're not having one baby."
I swear my heart stopped in my chest. Not having a baby? What was she talking about?
"What?" Vivienne and I asked together.
The technologist turned the screen slightly so we could see it better.
"There," she said, pointing to the black and white motion.
At first I didn't understand what I was looking at…then I saw it. It was like a rhythmic pulse, fluttering as fast as a bird’s wing.
And then I saw the second one.
“Is…is that what I think it is?” I asked.
“It’s exactly what you think,” the technologist said cheerfully. “There are two heartbeats!”
I stared at the screen, disbelieving. Two tiny babies. Two tiny beating hearts.
The room seemed to spin around me and for a minute I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
"Twins?" Vivienne whispered.
"Twins," the technologist confirmed with a smile. “I hope you’re ready for some exciting times.”
At that moment, my heart overflowed and I don't mind admitting that I cried.
I sat there holding Vivienne's hand while tears rolled down my face and for the first time in my life, I truly understood what it meant to feel blessed. Vivienne cried too. We held each other and she whispered that she never thought she’d ever be a mother.
“All those years they said I was barren,” she said. “They blamed me for never giving Carter an heir.”
“It was never your fault,” I murmured. Cupping her cheek, I swiped her tears away with my thumb. “He wasn’t the one you were meant to be with—you were fated to be my mate. Only and always mine, baby.”
She laughed through her tears and kissed me.
“Well, I guess the prophecy is coming true.”
“I guess it is,” I agreed, grinning back.
The prophecy had said that a female with gold-ringed eyes would give a male of the Jamison line many heirs.
For years everyone assumed that male was Carter.
They had all been wrong because I was right—the prophecy had never been about him.
It had always been about me—about us. About the woman sitting beside me with tears in her gold-ringed eyes and a smile on her beautiful face.
My mate…my future…my heart. The woman I thought I'd lost forever.
Later that night, after we'd returned home and celebrated with entirely too much takeout food and a peach pie that Vivienne insisted she absolutely needed for the babies, we sat together on the porch watching the sunset paint the mountains gold.
She leaned against me with one hand resting on her belly and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked softly.
I kissed the top of her head and held her a little tighter.
"Just how lucky I am."
She laughed quietly.
"There you go again."
"I'm serious, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m the luckiest man on Earth to have you as my mate. And now with the babies…well, I’m blessed. We both are.”
She nodded seriously.
“You know, I never would have thought that my real life would begin after forty. I thought I was going to have to stay in Blackridge, cooped up in Wolverton Manor for the rest of my life after Carter died. But then you came along and changed everything.”
“How could I help it?” I said, smiling. “The minute I saw you, I wanted you, baby. And now we have each other and we never have to go back there again.”
“I know.” She smiled contentedly. “Did I tell you I found a buyer for the place? He wants to buy all of Carter’s car collection too.”
“That’s wonderful.” I kissed the top of her head.
“That plus the money Carter left me is going to make us very wealthy, you know,” she told me.
“Baby, I was already wealthy,” I said, looking into her eyes. “Even if we didn’t have a dime, I’d be the richest man on Earth because I have you.”
“Oh, Kor…” She laughed softly and for a moment neither of us spoke.
The mountains stretched endlessly before us and the evening breeze carried the scent of pine trees and wildflowers. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled.
Vivienne looked up at me and smiled.
“You know, I didn’t think I could ever be this happy.”
“I know how you feel, sweetheart,” I told her. “Because I feel the same way.”
And as I held my mate in my arms and thought about the two tiny heartbeats we'd heard earlier that day, I realized something. For most of my life I had believed that happiness was something you earned—something you fought for or had to prove yourself worthy of.
But now I know better. Sometimes happiness is simply finding the right person and holding on with everything you have. And as I looked down into Vivienne's beautiful gold-ringed eyes, I knew one thing for certain…
I was never going to let her go.