Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
“I love you, too—”
My job is finally done, my vow completed, my destiny here served. You’re safe and you’re happy, and you’re loved as you deserve to be. That is all I’ve ever wanted for you. Stay with your Wrath. Love him and your son with your whole heart. And know that I’m not leaving you, I’m just going to be watching from above from now on.
Beth inched back, ignoring her tears. “I don’t understand this.”
You don’t have to. All you need to know is that your parents love you very much and always will.
The apparition lifted his hand and brushed L.W.’s cheek. Then he touched Beth’s hair.
“This isn’t real,” she said hoarsely.
It is, and I’ll prove it. Go back to the mansion I built for the purpose it is finally being used for. Go to the topmost peak in the front roof. You will find a bronze urn there. Your mahmen’s ashes were put in it after she was cremated. I scattered them over the mountain, letting the night wind draw them to the stars. That is how you will know this is real. I have to go. I love you—
There was a jerk of John Matthew’s body.
And then, “What the fuck.”
Beth looked up in alarm. Xhex had come back in from the hallway and she was standing in the open doorway, staring at her mate like she’d seen a stranger.
Because… well, maybe she had, too.
“I don’t know what just happened,” Beth said numbly.
When she glanced back down… John Matthew had returned, his eyes rolling into place, the pupils struggling to focus as if he’d woken up from a coma. And as his mate hustled over and took his hand, he looked at Xhex.
The female was pale to the point of being stark and she was shaking her head like she was utterly dumbfounded.
“Your grid,” his mate said. “Your grid…”
As a symphath, Xhex could apparently sense things other people could not, and Beth had heard about the way they categorized a person’s emotions and consciousness. Not that she completely comprehended it.
“The shadow is gone,” the female murmured as she stroked her mate’s face. “It’s just… him now.”
Beth’s eyes went back to the displays of photographs on the desk and she held L.W. a little tighter. Was it possible her father had found a way to stay with her after his death?
What a miracle that would be, if it were true.
“I have to go back home,” she heard herself say urgently. “Right now.”
When Xhex looked up, she started for the door. “I need to know if this is true. I have to know for sure.”
Except she already had her answer. In her heart, in her soul, she was absolutely certain that when she got back to the mansion her father had built so that the Brotherhood and their mates and families could all live together under one roof, so that they could be safer together, so that they could support each other through the good times and the bad, she was going to dematerialize up to the rooftop…
And find the urn her father had put up there.
And know that he had always been with her.
Her mom, as well.
In truth, she had had… the very best parents in all the world.
* * *
Curiously, it had not been hard to leave his daughter.
As Darius arrived in a hazy landscape of white nothingness, he was at peace in a way he couldn’t remember ever having been before. The thing about parenting was, even though you never felt you had done enough or done anything really well, there was a time to let go… there was a moment when you finally had to release your young to proceed out on their own. And if that time presented itself when you knew what you had brought into the world was in a good place? It was easier than you thought.
Granted, his parenting had always been distilled through another: first, his loyal butler, and then, after a miracle, John Matthew. But he hadn’t let such barriers get in the way of his love or his duty. And Beth was truly living her best life…
After debating the when of it all for so long, he had not been prepared for tonight to be the night necessarily… except something about seeing his daughter and his grandson sitting on the lap of the great Blind King, with Wrath’s powerful arms wrapped around the two most precious things in Darius’s world, had made him realize that for better or worse, there was nothing more for him to do.
She was, literally, in the very best hands.
And it was time for him to leave her.
Just as the confirmation struck his heart, a white door appeared directly in front of him, and he took a deep breath and recognized what was being offered to him.