“Okay.”
He looked over at Noah, his face going dark. “If you ever hurt her…”
“Oh my God, dad. Noah won’t ever hurt me.”
Anthony dragged his finger across his own throat, his eyes cold and dead as he continued to threaten her mate. “I will put your head on a pike if you do, boy.” Then before either of them could respond, he disappeared into the woods.
Cole and Jane fell into step beside them. Jane looked perfect as ever. It was hard to tell if she’d been injured and had already healed, or if she was covering injuries with a demon glamour. Cole had a gash in his side that still sparked with magic but was slowly closing. It might have killed him if he wasn’t fully immortal like Jane.
Cole clapped Noah on the back. “You need electrical and Internet at your place?”
“Yeah,” Noah said. It was still awkward between the two of them. The time and distance would take a while to close. “And running water would be nice, but it’s not necessary.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sydney said. “I’m not pooping in the woods.”
Cole winked at her. “We can’t let the princess poop in the woods.”
Jane shot Sydney a look that said, I told you he’d come around.
It was only then that Sydney realized their pack wasn’t there. And neither was Cole’s.
“Where are the wolves?”
“We voted after you left with Fiona. We didn’t want to risk them or anyone we couldn’t protect. It’s why we brought the demons in,” Jane said. “We didn’t want to give the humans the satisfaction of casualties.”
That plan had almost worked.
Jane and Cole left them and went back toward the hive. The entire group was going off in their own directions. Sydney wondered if once the wards were up they’d ever have the bonds they’d had so many years ago before all this.
They’d won. She should feel happy, but all she felt was tired. And it was still hours until the sun would rise.
Noah tugged on her hand. “Come on, Sydney. The world just changed. We’re free.”
Epilogue
A year later.
Noah sat at a long table on the roof of the penthouse next to his mate. The Cary Town Luxury Apartments were fully redone—almost back to their glory days from decades earlier. The pool had water. The elevators worked. And they’d managed to restore the cherry wood paneling in the lobby and hallways, much to Sydney’s delight.
That had been Anthony’s project. Who knew the vampire was so attached to paneling? Though perhaps it had been an excuse to spend time with his daughter to build a relationship that wasn’t based on keeping her under lock and key.
Jane and Greta were conspiring near the pool—Greta in her cat form and Jane mimicking it. They meowed at each other even though Noah was pretty sure Jane didn’t speak Catonese. Dayne was on the other end of the roof speaking with Luc and Anna, unaware that Cole’s mate was about to try to fool him with her shapeshifting disguise.
Anthony stood next to the grill making burgers and grumbling loudly about it.
“Make mine rare,” Noah said.
The vampire king wrinkled his nose at the meat as he flipped it. Charlee brought out more meat patties, and he growled. He didn’t do menial labor, and losing his former position as Master of All He Surveyed, wasn’t sitting well. But there was no longer any excuse he could give for why he had to be such a control freak.
After Tam had made sure the new borders and wards were secure—with several layers of magical security redundancy—Cole had come in and added his own brand of high-tech security to the mix.
As rumors spread, therians and vampires without a home began to seek refuge again in Cary Town. Cain brought gold he’d been hoarding in a cave in his dimension to create commerce as the city began to grow and flourish again.
At Noah’s suggestion, a large tree house was built in the place of a previous park, standing as a memorial to Fiona and Z.
Cary Town was not without its logistical problems in the absence of a human population. To deal with the lack of humans to feed from, therians who were given shelter in the city were required to donate their blood to a vampire.
Therians weren’t thrilled, but there was so much wildlife in the Cary Town forest and so much protection in the city itself, that becoming a vampire meal seemed better than the life they’d left behind.
Tam’s message had indeed been delivered by the scrawny guy, and no one from the hub city—let alone an army—dared venture near their borders. It didn’t mean they never would, but for now there was peace.
It was full dark, and the whole gang was on the roof now. With the new wards and their city returning to life, they’d all come back together—for the first time feeling as if they were all on the same side. Even Hadrian, the vampire from the church, had joined them. His shy mate, Angeline, clung close to him.
The stories of the past were still told about this spat or that one, about one of them torturing or trying to kill another of them, about being on opposite teams, and about being on the same team only for expediency. They’d each been the heroes of their own stories and the villains of others. But for the first time, they were all truly united. Somehow along the way they’d found friends. They’d found family. And most importantly, they’d found love.
I hope you enjoyed the FATED MATES series!
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Thanks again!
The Complete Fated Mates Series:
Book 1: Blood Lust
Book 2: Incubus Awakened
Book 3: Hunted
Book 4: Bad Magic
Book 5: Forbidden
Book 6: Caged Moon
Acknowledgments
Cover Art: Robin Johnson at gobookcoverdesign.com
Digital Formatting and moral support: M (I love you more than Starbucks.)
Editorial Assistance: Karen and Michelle. Thanks for getting it back to me so quickly. And Karen thanks also for helping brainstorm with me for the title! Without you I would have yet another title (I’ve got two between two pen names) that had the word “Blood” in it.