Page 41 of Flawed Fate
“Do you have honey?” I ask no one in particular, pouring a mountain of it into my cup and downing the scalding liquid in three burning swallows.
“Damn,” Zeke says before looking over at Declan. “Cole needs help cleaning out the shed. We have bats again.” Like nothing ever happened, and I’ve been at this table every morning since before I could walk.
Addison stumbles in with her baby and gives me a long, loaded stare across the kitchen. For a brief moment, I think she’s about to say something rude, but instead she gives me a brief nod, not letting on to anything. The baby grins at the sticky honey smeared on my chin, which makes me smile, a real grin…maybe my first since I got here.
Dinner that night is awkwardly loud, and nobody mentions the honey incident from breakfast. That’s how I know I’m now, officially, theirs.
While everyone’s still finishing up, I sneak away to find Declan on the back porch. Because that’s how this works… sensing each other, even in the dark.
“Hey.” I break his silence. “Thank you.” My breath clouds the cool, dusky air. I push up on tiptoes and kiss him. Quick and almost shy-like, then again with certainty. “You know what?”
“What’s that?”
“I like it here,” I tell him.
“Is that so?”
“Yep. And that’s enough to erase every possible doubt in a single night.” I grab his hand, warm and steady.
It’s odd building something in the cracks left by trauma, but maybe this is how new generations happen. Mutations. Improvements. Second, third, fourth chances rewritten over scars. I know this is Declan’s home, but I’m the heartbeat now, the wild part, the next step.
When we finally head back inside, the door closes behind us. The finality of it feels as if the world is letting us have this. Maybe for just one night, maybe tomorrow too. Or possibly the rest of our lives.
Honestly, I don’t know what the future holds, but the bond between us doesn’t feel like a cage anymore. But a new trail. A path from ashes, that runs straight from my chest to his, with both of us choosing every step, together.
I think that’s what love is.
Choosing.
Even when everything in your past has told you that you don’t deserve to have this. But we do. I choose Declan, and he chooses me back. Everyone deserves that.
We wash dishes. We fold laundry. We move around each other in the small kitchen like we’ve been doing it for years, and maybe someday we will have been.
The world outside can do whatever the hell it wants with itself. But here, it’s just us. And that’s enough.
More than.
EPILOGUE
DECLAN
Three weeks,and the scent is always on my mind.
It’s already busy enough lately, with us checking in on neighboring packs and clans to make sure there’s no sudden blowback in the aftermath of our attacks. As far as we know, things have been quiet. It’s not like Moore broadcast his work all over the place. He couldn’t risk pulling back the curtain and having the real, legitimate medical community shut him down once they knew how he obtained his data.
Still, even with that calming down and life going back to normal, there’s more than enough work with the pack to keep me busy without my focus being diluted by Iris’s new scent. It’s been driving me crazy.
Not in a bad way. The kind of crazy where I keep finding excuses to press my nose into her hair or pull her against me just to breathe her in. Iris thinks I’m being clingy, not that she’s complaining.
She’s not wrong, either. But there’s a reason, and I’ve been waiting until I was sure before I said anything.
I’ve been sure for about four days now. The scent changed—something richer underneath her usual smell, sweeter, layeredin a way that made my wolf go still the first time I caught it. Like he already knew. As if he’d been waiting for it.
And then, two nights ago, lying beside her in the dark with my ear against her stomach because I couldn’t help myself… I heard it.
Not one heartbeat. Two.
I almost woke her up right there. It took everything I had to stay quiet, to let her sleep, to lie there grinning at the ceiling like an idiot while a tiny heartbeats drummed against my ear.
