Epilogue
Darkness envelops me, but every other one of my senses is heightened.
I touch the fabric covering my eyes, a strip that Lucan ripped off his own shirt and tied around my head to blindfold me. It smells like him, pine and earth.
But the werewolf himself… I have no idea where he is. Behind me or in front of me or somewhere else entirely.
“Lucan!” I protest with a laugh, reaching my fingers out and scraping nothing but fresh, brisk air with a hint of something briny I can’t identify.
It’s been one month since we left Veradel, after I made sure every Chosen One was given an antivenom.
One month since Taika, Belinda, a newly-healed Diggory, and I sat around a Healing Center bed with Sylvia’s statue lying rigidly on the mattress, tiny, translucent veins of venom I was never able to see as a human crawling along her stone skin.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that scene, even if I do end up living forever.
The way we pushed the needle into one of those veins. The way Belinda’s tears splattered her daughter’s fossilized face as we waited. The way Diggory wrung his hands together, until color began to bloom in Sylvia’s face again, and her own hands twitched.
It was those hands of hers that moved first, a single finger pointing out before both palms lay flat and moved in small, circular motions.
“What is she saying?” Belinda asked Diggory immediately.
His own gruff face streaked with tears as he said, “I’m here.”
And then Sylvia opened her eyes. They all opened their eyes—every Chosen One who had fossilized to some degree or another.
Even the purely stone ones, as long as they had turned to statues in this lifetime and remained undamaged, uncrumbled, unbroken, melted back into flesh and blood as soon as the antivenom found their still-human hearts.
My own eyes are still closed, though, blindfolded by the strip of Lucan’s shirt.
Over the last month, we’ve pushed farther and farther west, into wild terrain with nothing more than two backpacks and a tent.
We’ve seen waterfalls, the raging water plummeting a hundred feet off a cliff.
Animals I never even knew existed. Canyons and valleys and rivers and now?
I’m not sure, because I can’t see.
“Over here.”
I whip toward the source of the teasing growl, my entire body tingling in anticipation.
A claw caresses my opposite arm, and I jolt with a gasp, every nerve crackling.
“Stop with this torture, Lucan.”
“Why? Isn’t torture what I do best?”
I laugh and then suck in a sharp breath when his hand grips my waist, his other hand clutching mine. Every point of contact between us alights with electricity.
“Follow me,” he whispers into my ear.
I don’t protest as he leads me forward, up a sharp incline where high grass tickles my ankles. I just grasp onto him, relishing the feel of his warm skin and working muscles beneath my fingers.
Until we’re descending again, and my feet step on something cold and wet and strange.
“Oh,” I breathe, my foot sinking an inch. I wiggle my toes into the grittiness. Take another step. “What is it?”
“Keep walking,” Lucan says, and I follow him, trusting him completely.
Slowly, I regain my footing, my confidence growing with each step. “It’s cold… but hot? Soft… but gritty?” My nostrils flare. “What’s that sound?”
Something huge is crashing and roaring, like a thousand werewolves howling at the moon. Lucan chuckles when a sudden, unmistakable surge of water surrounds my feet. Taken aback, I hop on the balls of my feet with a squeal.
Lucan steps around me as he wraps his arms around the back of my shoulders and cages me into his chest.
“You should see how beautiful this is,” he murmurs in my ear. The breeze of his words sends goosebumps down my neck.
“I can’t see anything,” I exclaim, pouting. “What are you looking at?”
“You,” he tells me simply, beginning to untie the knot behind my head. “But there’s another view for you to look at.”
When the fabric falls away, I reel in a breath… just as a wave hits me in the shins.
“This, little nightmare, is the ocean.”
The sound of my gasp is masked by the crash of another swell against the shore, the cold water nipping at my ankles, crawling up my skin.
“The ocean,” I murmur in disbelief. Staring. Unable to tear my eyes away. “It’s like the end of the world.”
Blinking rapidly into the sunrise, I trace the horizon that cuts across the sky, separating the pink-tinged clouds from the deep blue, almost black, water. When I inhale, salt stings my nostrils, the taste of it lingering on my tongue.
Lucan stands there, smiling at me, until I finally wretch my gaze away. Then he scoops me up with a taunting laugh and barrels into the frigid waves.
“Lucan!” I shriek, a split-second left before he sends us through the white crest of a massive wave.
With my eyes squeezed shut, the water roars through my ears, the freezing temperature biting at my skin in a way that makes me feel more awake than ever before.
Lucan breaks the surface, shaking droplets from his hair, and kisses me. I cling to his neck, wrapping my legs around his waist until our bodies mold together. Just wet lips and slick skin and salty ocean water.
And love.
It radiates from every touch, every atom of our bodies intertwining. As his fingers tense, bringing me as close as humanly possible, I arch into him to notch myself into every angle of his body.
His tongue caresses my bottom lip, bringing it into his mouth and nibbling with his canines, teasing me with the sting.
This is how it’s been, just me and him, so free to explore each other’s hearts and minds and bodies like eternity would never be enough.
And with this stretchy fabric clinging to mere bits of me, it’s easy access for Lucan’s roaming hands.
He groans when his fingers slip underneath my top.
My nipples pebble, desperately anticipating that zap of electricity he likes to make me wait for.
I grind into him, begging for him to appease me.
Luckily, Lucan's in a giving mood, rolling my nipples between his thumbs and index fingers, pinching. My core ignites with a delicious current.
He drops kisses down my neck as I lace my fingers through his thick hair, guiding him lower where I crave the feel of his canines.
The moment before my eyes start to flutter closed, a wave taller than Lucan rams into us.
“Oh, shit!” I shriek as Lucan loses his balance, and we crash into the water again, spluttering when we both come up grinning before I wrap myself around him again.
Lucan brushes back my salty hair sticking to my face, planting a soft kiss against my lips.
“Have you been here before?” I whisper.
He nods. “Once.” For a moment, he gets lost to a far-away memory before he continues, “My father brought me. Right before he died, actually. Soren, Merrick, Vivian, and I played in the sand and rode the waves for hours. I felt so insignificant looking out at this vastness of nothing. But as usual, my father was so much wiser than I am.”
Lucan closes his eyes while I trace his features with the pad of my thumb. Down his cheekbone, across his jaw.
“And why is that?” I prompt him softly.
“He explained how it made him feel—that when he looked at the ocean, it humbled him. Made him feel like he was a part of something bigger, and that this immense stretch of water didn’t separate us. Instead, it connects us.”
“Where do you think it goes?” I ask, peering out at the horizon, trying to imagine other people, other societies, other ways of life. “Do you think anyone else is out there?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Lucan answers, slicing his eyes over my shoulder and dipping his head to gesture at something down the beach. “A boat for you, Saskia Veradel.”
The name still makes my stomach flutter. Since I don’t have a family name of my own, Lucan offered me his months ago, and I took it for the same reason he did: to remind myself, always, what our kingdom means to us. What our people mean to us.
Which is why my breath catches when I twist to find something bobbing in the water that I didn’t notice before. Made of wood and painted white, it’s curved with a long flag-like piece of fabric attached to a tall pole flapping in the wind.
I scrunch my brows when I turn back to Lucan.
“My father had it made in case any pack member wanted to leave and explore the rest of the world,” he explains.
I’ve sent some people to come out and maintain it over the last few hundred years.
And last night while you were still sleeping in the tent, I came out and dragged it back into the water. ”
“A boat,” I repeat.
“A sailboat, to be exact.”
My eyes widen. “For us?” I ask. “To use?”
“That depends,” Lucan says with a chuckle. “Only if you want. We can sail away. Find out what’s out there.” He cocks his head out toward the horizon, then swings it back to the shore. “Or we can go back to Veradel. Your choice. I’m okay with either one, as long as I get to be with you.”
I chew on my lip, deliberating. Whenever I pictured my ideal future, I envisioned taking care of others in the Healing Center, aiding Taika as I learned everything I could from him.
And I still want to do that, but I meant what I said in the throne room of the Blood Moon Palace: I want to see the parts of the world I’ve missed out on as much as I need to breathe.
This freedom I’ve experienced over the last month has only just begun to mend the part of me that grew up suffocating, wrapped up in a band of others’ expectations and control.
So before I can keep healing other people, I need to fully heal myself.
“One day,” I say confidently, “we’ll go back home. But not today.”
Lucan smiles as he starts to wade us through the water and waves. “Good choice, little nightmare.”
As we close in on the boat, it rocks against the shore, held tight by a rope that disappears into the dark blue water.
With two enormous hands gripping my ass, Lucan hoists me up onto the deck before he scrambles up behind me.
The wood beneath our feet creaks, and I grab onto the woven railing to keep my balance.
“Sea legs,” he chuckles and waves a hand over our new temporary home. “Go explore. You’ll get them eventually. Just in time for me to make them shake again tonight.”
He winks and I roll my eyes, biting down on a smile as I walk the outer edge without falling. There’s a wooden wheel with gold spokes that sits prominently in the back, a table and two chairs nailed into the deck, and ropes that jut out at every odd angle.
I stick my head into a doorway to see a few short steps that lead down into a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.
There on the tiny dresser next to the bed, I can see a few of my belongings already sitting atop it: my handheld mirror, lipstick, the gold chain that first connected us, the key to a Wall that is no longer standing.
By the time I return, Lucan is busy tying knots and pulling the anchor up out of the waves.
Leaning against the cabin, I marvel as he works, his muscles contracting, his tan skin glistening in the sun, until the sail unleashes in the wind with a booming whoosh.
A gasp rattles out of me with force as I look up, enamored with the gorgeous cream sheet of fabric. My neck cranes up to the top of the mast that kisses the sunlight.
I blink back at Lucan, beaming, as my eyes adjust.
“Ready?” he asks.
I’ve never been more ready. To learn what’s out there, to explore the world, to seek and find the unknown.
“Ready,” I say.
Then together we sail toward the horizon, to whatever awaits us beyond.