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The fight drained out of me as sobs wracked my body. Ryan thrashed in his chair, his muffled screams piercing through the silence of the room. His face was red, veins bulging as he fought against his bindings.

“Shut him up,” Atlas grumbled, his voice dispassionate as he passed a liquor bottle to Thorne.

Lucian’s imposing frame cut through the room as if he commanded the very air around him. He gripped Ryan’s jaw and with a sudden, fluid motion, he snapped his neck. The sound was sharp. Ryan’s body slouched, his head hanging at an unnatural angle.

Lucian shoved the chair backward, sending his lifeless form crashing to the floor. He turned to face me then. “You’re family now. That’s not something we take lightly."

My chest heaved as the room spun around me, the blood pounding in my ears. All I smelled was death. I was the only one left. I’d brought a nightmare to our door and was the only one that survived it. How was that fair?

Wilder lifted me into his arms like I was weightless. I didn’t fight him. My body felt foreign, disconnected, as though I were trapped inside my own skin and seeing this through the eyes of someone else.

The others watched us, their masks concealing their expressions, but their loyalty to each other was clear.

They fell into step behind Wilder as we left the house, its door yawning open like a final, silent scream. They didn’t bother to close it, didn’t care about what might come next when someone stumbled upon the horrors within. For them, this was the end of one chapter and the seamless beginning of another.

I stared blankly as I was carried down the long driveway, the gravel crunching under their shoes. At the end, two vehicles waited: a pickup truck and an SUV. The headlights cut through the oppressive darkness, their engines idling.

Wilder carried me to the SUV and carefully placed me in the back seat, his movements gentle. The driver’s door opened, and Hunter climbed in, his expression unreadable beneath his mask.

Atlas followed, slipping into the passenger seat, Daniella’s severed head balanced carefully in his lap. The rear door opened again, and something warm and furry jostled me.

“Moose,” I whispered, my voice trembling. I pulled him close as he nuzzled into me. Tears spilled down my cheeks as I buried my face in his fur. Wilder slid in beside me and rested a hand on my thigh.

The SUV started moving, the pickup following right behind it.

I didn’t ask where we were going.

I didn’t have it in me to fight, to scream anymore, or to plead. My life as I knew it was over. My grip tightened on Moose as the night swallowed us whole.

EPILOGUE

Thin strips of moonlight spilled across the marble floors of our wing; the silver glow intermingled with the stands of Christmas lights reflecting off the polished. The compound was quiet at this hour, a vast, sprawling silence settling over the massive property.

Moose lifted his head and watched as I moved across the room to the kitchenette. I grabbed a bottle of water and twisted the cap off, leaning back against the edge of the counter. It was a little before three in the morning and I needed to be up in a few hours.

Lucian and Thorne were heading out today, moving back in on the girl he’d been circling for the past few weeks. That left me, Hunter, and Atlas to oversee things until their return.

Romeo…was another story.

No one had seen him in two days, not since he’d stripped Melody naked and chased her through the garden maze. Fuck knows what he’d been doing with her since then. We’d all learned long ago to let him burn out his bursts of energy on his own. I made a mental note to check on him tomorrow, though.

My eyes strayed to the massive blueprint pinned to the wall across the room, diagonally from where all my masks were. The farmhouse.Herfarmhouse. She didn’t talk about it anymore, but I knew she was curious. Her fingers had lingered over the plans just last week, her brows furrowing as though she couldn’t decide whether to love it or hate it.

I’d seen the battle in her pretty brown eyes, the longing for the dream she’d once had, and the bitterness of what it now represented. In time, she’d come to accept what it truly symbolized. I took another swig of water and then crossed the room to our bed, studying the beautiful woman curled beneath the covers.

Her hair was a silky dark wave against the pillows. Her engagement ring glinted in the faint light. It had taken every day since the end of her vacation to get here, weeks of wearing her down both physically and emotionally.

She hadn’t made it easy, not that I’d expected her to. We had a few setbacks. The first was her discovering what Atlas actually did with his collection of heads. He of course apologized and decided to burn it in consideration of her feelings. That was a big step for him, Atlas didn’t feel things on a normal level to begin with.

The second setback was when I made her watch the news about a gruesome discovery at a rental house and the farm nearby. It was a tragic case. A mystery that would never be solved. There were a few more, two ended with her being sedated, and another chained in our bedroom for three days. That last one had us making sure she and KJ didn’t cross paths for the time being.

They were sisters now, just like I promised her. I understood it would take time for them to grow close. After the setbacks, I re-doubled my efforts. She’d softened again somewhat, the sharp edges of her resistance dulling under the weight of my persistence. I knew better than to think the fight in her was completely gone.

I’d worried when we left the vacation rental it had been snuffed out entirely. She didn’t speak for days, and I was forced to get her fluids via a damn IV. I learned it was simply buried deep under her exhaustion and grief when she came at me with a butcher knife. I had since taken full advantage of all the ways she could try and kill me.Some battles I let her win. Others she had to lose.

Fucking her afterward was half the bonding experience. I knew she didn’t mean it and that was proven as I slid back into our bed. She murmured something unintelligible in her sleep, and I pulled her close, her naked body fitting perfectly against mine.

She stirred but didn’t wake, her head coming to rest on my chest, her breath warm against my skin. I smoothed a hand over her hair, brushing it back from her face as my lips pressed against her temple. This was all I wanted, her with me.

Sometimes I wondered if she dreamed of running away, but it didn’t matter. She’d learned twice what happened when she tried to get off the property, and the lesson had stayed with her. She knew now whether she admitted it or not, that there was no world for her without me, and no world for me without her.