Epilogue Three

Naomi

It’s been fifty years since we took over as Alpha and Luna this full moon.

Fifty years. Time has the cruellest ability to just vanish from underneath your feet. I swear I was a feisty, opinionated, quad-bike obsessed woman in her twenties just the other day. Now, creeping upon me like a riptide, I'm a content, slow-moving little fossil.

I’m his girl, his Queen. He is my King. Now and forever. The quad-bike-revving beast of a man who only ever cares for us. I love the fact I’m still his girl even as time eats away at our vitality. My hair is no longer fiery red. I’ve conceded to grey.

He insists it only makes my brown eyes all the prettier. I’d blush, except I love every word he says.

I still find any opportunity to stand above him and bring my face to his, marvelling at the lack of wrinkles on his relaxed, still-boyish features. We’re currently down on the very south of the Shadowlands coast, in Finn’s old family home, left to him by his parents.

I wonder if all old people are naturally drawn to the sound of flowing water and birdsong. It felt like a homing beacon we had to follow. Both Finn and I dreamt of the journey.

Everything built by Lucien stands stunningly strong. His legacy remains embedded in wood and craft. Finn was quiet for an awfully long time when we first arrived before telling me as much as he could about his childhood, looking up at the stars from his converted cabin bed.

It only reinforced what I already knew. The kind, loving, gentle child he had been was never lost despite Finn multiplying in size.

I adore the way we still spar and disagree. Albeit without actually drawing blood in the garden for several years. He is my other half in every way. My soulmate, my darkest night sky and sweetest blush of dawn.

When we first stepped down as Alpha and Luna, we moved back into Finn’s cottage. The memories provoked were almost painful. So wonderfully joyous yet out of reach now.

Now, in our seventies, we have not been in charge of Shadowlands for quite some time. When Rami reached thirty years old, we stepped down.

Helena and Alexander, long since dead and honoured, have almost started a trend. Freya and Zeke left Aisling and her mate to run Rising Star years before us.

She had insisted she didn’t need a mate to be Luna. She could do it on her own. Which she did for several years until fate caused her to cross paths with little Brannon. Wren and Hayden’s boy.

He was a reclusive bookworm, often refusing to join the full moon performances. His dark eyes and short silver hair made him a curiosity to some. Tall, deviously strong behind his slender appearance, he was a loyal, quiet man.

Now, he enabled all of the wildly curled brunette Aisling’s explosively imaginative dreams.

Nikolai and Genevieve’s stunning little Elena, a fiery black-haired, ruby-eyed trailblazer, was mated at just twenty to one of the Beta students. At one of her very first Full Moon balls. Beta Gregor’s grandson, in fact.

Now, Elena and Grayson command the magnificent White Forest Castle with their own family. A beautiful couple. The fact Grayson survived the night he discovered his bond with Elena is a testament to Nikolai’s grudging adoration for the women in his life.

That and his friendship with Sawyer. He no doubt listened to never-ending rants about how nobody would be good enough for the princess of White Forest.

Genevieve simply smiled and stroked his arm until he firmly shook hands with Grayson and held his little girl close.

Despite never taking a wolf again, Sawyer rose to be Nikolai’s confidante. Someone the White Forest Alpha never doubted. I believe it is the fact that he has no wolf to mislead or trick him. Sawyer’s opinions are entirely his own, his choices and loyalties affected by no other influence.

I know Finn missed him. On quieter nights, sitting on the porch together in the swinging bench, he weighs up his achievements. The hits and misses.

He still regards losing Sawyer to White Forest as one of the misses. But then I remind him, whilst stroking his huge chest that Sawyer was never the issue. Phoebe was the one who could not stay. Too much pain, too much twisted gossip that time only made worse.

I often think of the signs I missed in my younger sisters. I prayed to the Goddess for Eleanor to find happiness and leave the anger behind.

Sawyer and Phoebe had a baby girl soon after setting up in White Forest. Phoebe wrote for permission to call her Penny.

Of course, I granted my permission for her name in a heartbeat, but I had to ask my sisters. Matilda thought it was a beautiful offering.

Eleanor could never be traced.

Having strange dreams about Rising Star, she had vanished one night from Shadowlands, taking only a few possessions. A note left explaining she needed a new start, that she had to start following her dreams.

Eleanor’s vanishing happened only a few weeks after Jane. The tears I wept at feeling my family shatter apart last months. I look back at that first year as a Luna and marvel that Finn and I survived.

One of the biggest challenges of the first year was Jane vanishing. People were quick to accuse Phoebe of harm, seeing as she was the last person to see her. Phoebe insisted Jane was following her wolf, mentioning dreams of a life in Five Lakes.

She offered to go and look for Jane and Eleanor, but I refused. Phoebe has finished playing in the shadows.

No other women went missing, and I suppose, as the months and years rolled on, we just saw it as a random, peculiar coincidence.

The relief in Phoebe’s later letters was obvious when Penny eventually received her wolf and confirmed it was kind and sweet. Indeed, I think all of us were extra cautious around the time our children received their wolves.

After Phoebe’s wolf’s manipulations became common knowledge, so many people came forward, in every pack, declaring that their wolves were causing them doubts, pain, or unhappiness.

It took her extreme case for others to acknowledge the lies of being a shifter. Sometimes it’s fucking awful to have a wolf. Wren, myself, Genevieve and Freya tried to come up with different strategies and therapies to help.

Perhaps that will be Phoebe’s legacy in the end.

All I know is that she and Sawyer are happy. Just as blissfully rewarded by love as Finn and I and just as ancient and aching. So I don’t judge. Age reveals the pointlessness of such branding and blaming.

Even Cillian wrote declaring his forgiveness a few years after leaving. .

Just as we never saw Zena and Briss again, I believe people who run do not want to be found. There is no need to go dragging them back to a reality they have no interest in being part of. Jane and Eleanor were just….done with what their packs had to offer.

Finn and I have taken to lying on his old cabin bed underneath the stars, talking for hours at a time. Reminiscing, going over old times. I know it’s a sign of something coming, but I have his hand in mine, our bond still crackling away with affection and adoration. I’m happy.

Rami was the last to take over from Finn and I of the next generation of leaders. Not through lack of ability. But because I wanted to see him settle down. Know that he would have a mate to support him with the weight of responsibility.

Our beautiful, wonderful, kind, competitive, lethally accurate archer of a son.

Finn was his Pa, without doubt or hesitation in his mind. My little prince turned into a fully fledged Alpha before my eyes.

I am sure I’m meant to stop seeing him as a croissant-rolling, screaming, yelping little monkey but when I see his strong frame and jaw, those sea-green eyes, so decisive and intelligent I still wonder where my tiny, manic superhero vanished to.

Cillian was right to step down if he did not feel the role was projecting his life forward. For Finn and I, it catapulted us into a happy, peaceful existence.

Rami is a natural leader. From the age of five, he commanded his little band of fellow archers. That only grew as I trained him to take over from Finn and lead the defensive training.

The wall went up against the humans. They are no longer a concern of ours. King Heath is a grizzled, scarred demon referenced only in fairy-tales.