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It’s sanity laced with joy, with peace, with boneless exhaustion and an ache in my muscles I know I’ll gladly be feeling for days. On top of me, Nora props herself up on an elbow and smirks at me.

“Well,” she says, voice filled with laughter. “That’s one way to round out a weekend. I don’t know how in the world I’m supposed to just get back to normal life with a regular Monday after this.”

It’s Sunday afternoon. A peaceful, ordinary Sunday afternoon, one that seems wonderfully incongruent compared to the magnitude with which both our lives have just changed.

“I suppose you only have yourself to blame for that,” I tease her. “Since you were the one who didn’t want to take a big, extravagant trip for the occasion.”

She smacks my arm lightly. “Oh, sure, put the blame on me. Because you’re not the one who has to stick around Seattle for classes.”

It’s just one more thing I admire about my mate. Once she decided on the college she wanted to attend, one right here in Seattle, she didn’t want to wait for fall semester. She jumped right in with a few summer courses in addition to her job at the bookstore.

Watching her pick that dream back up, hearing her speak so enthusiastically about her teachers and classmates and plans for after she graduates, has been a joy. It lights her up from the inside out and gives her something positive to focus on, especially with the ongoing prep for Sorenson’s trial.

Thanks to his own stupidity, greed, and hubris, Sorenson hasn’t seen the outside world since the night he tried to kidnap Nora, and based on the mounting evidence against him it’s unlikely he ever will again.

We don’t let it take up more of our thoughts than it has to, and have both decided to move on from it with pointed determination. Sorenson is in our past, and he won’t detract from the happiness of our future.

“We could have waited,” Nora says, shifting her hips around where she’s still impaled on me in a way that makes us both groan. “Maybe gone somewhere over my fall break, or waited until Christmas.”

“Absolutely not,” I grumble, pulling out of her with a wet slide that draws more groans.

Shifting back into my human form, I walk to the dry area further back in the cave and pick up the duffel bag I stored here earlier this morning. I take out a towel and return to my mate, cleaning her up before pulling out the fresh sets of clothes I packed for us both. We pull them on and get ready to head home, toourhome, as it has been the last few months.

“Impatient, as always,” she teases.

I sling an arm around the small of her back and draw her to me. “Can you blame me? I’ve waited three centuries for you, my treasure.”

Another wide, bright smile lights up her face. “I suppose that’s true. And now you get to spend another three hundred ordinary, normal years with me.”

“There’s nothing on this earth that sounds better to me than that, little siren.”

And truly, how could I ever ask for more? The mundane and magickal all mixed up together in the kind of life I never even knew to dream of. A string of endless tomorrows stretching out in front of us.

My mate, my treasure, my Nora.

Truly mine at last.