Page 27 of Found (Mate Rejected #8)
EPILOGUE 2
AERIN
FIVE YEARS LATER
I t’s a bright, sunny day and I smile as I walk out of the three story old farm we turned into a pack home, to the garden where a blonde-haired girl with blue-gray eyes is holding a ball behind her back as a dark-haired boy with brown eyes tries desperately to grab it.
As soon as both see me, they start yelling.
“Sweetheart, what have I told you? You need to learn to share with your little brother.” I bend to kiss the top of Janie’s hair, inhaling her soft fragrance.
“But I don’t want to share.” She sticks her bottom lip out.
“Didn’t Milo share his last sweet with you?” I gently remind her. “Even though it’s his favorite?”
“Fine.” She blows out a resigned sigh.
They run off, and no sooner have they reached the toys in the grass than they’re laughing and chasing each other.
A smile stretches across my face as Mack winds his arms around me, resting his hands on my pregnant belly.
I lean back. “Are you sure you still want enough for a football team? We have two and some days I swear my ears are bleeding with all this yelling.”
Mack presses a kiss on my throat. “What? Did you say something? I couldn’t hear you.”
Laughing, I spin around, looping my arms around him as I rise up on my tiptoes, meeting his warm, brown eyes. “I love you, Mack.”
“I love you too, baby.”
His lips are about to touch mine when I lean back. “Mack?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Aerin?”
“That night you left with Bennett to find out what was wrong in town and it turned out to be a distraction,” I say.
He looks at me, then turns to look at our kids currently doing their best to make our ears bleed. “ This was the dream?”
I coil my arms around him and I nod. “This is the dream. Except, right before you kissed me, my dream ended.”
“Ah.” He gives me a knowing look. “Did you want me to kiss you now?”
I look at him and I struggle to believe I’m living this life. That my dreams have actually come true.
I’m relieved we’ve moved further out of town so we never have to worry about bothering any neighbors with our constantly screaming kids.
The rest of the pack has settled in just as well.
I have so many willing babysitters for Janie and Milo that they’re always volunteering before I ever have to ask if I want to spend time with Mack.
Adela and my grandparents absolutely love being surrounded by so many children, and not just mine.
I smile when a scream erupts from the house.
Bennett and Helena had their baby, a girl they called Nora. It’s rare now that I don’t see Bennett with a grin on his face. He still works at the garage in town, but he’s rarely there at 6 now. His hours are more part time. I don’t think he will ever stop working there. He loves what he does too much to quit, but his priorities have shifted.
Just like my dad.
I worried for the longest time that when he decided to make Winter Lake, his new home that it would only be a matter of time before he tried to take over and lead the pack.
That never happened.
Not just because Florence, the woman he took as a mate, gave birth to twin boys, and he gets less sleep than me and Mack did when we first had Janie. Because his outlook on life was changing even before he had more children.
He told me there was more to life than leading, and he seems far happier and more relaxed to not be the one people run to for help fixing their problems.
He seems content to just be a dad.
“How’s your power today?” Mack asks, distracting me from my thoughts.
I gather up some of the love in my heart and I throw it at him.
Pleasure fills his eyes as he pulls me close. “Ah. Your control is?—”
“The best it’s ever been.” I loop my arms around the back of his shoulders. “Everything became easier when I stopped fighting for control.”
“Life generally is,” Adela calls out from a picnic table in the garden. She closes the magazine she was reading and sets it aside, sitting back in her seat to watch Janie and Milo playing in the grass. “If you want to go inside and have some quiet, I can watch them.”
Right near the forest, the sweet scent of baking drifts toward us.
Penny will be in there, probably with Colton, baking up a storm. Her baking operation hasn’t just doubled. It has quadrupled. And she absolutely loves what she does when she isn’t busy chasing around her son, Benjamin, who is as red-headed and lively as she is.
Everyone is happy.
Chris and Zoe have healed from Shane and the Raleighs attack on our old home. They initially said they wanted to have a tiny house in the forest to enjoy the privacy they craved, but often spend more time at the big house than they do in the forest.
“Should we leave the kids with Adela and?—”
“Go upstairs to be alone?” Mack winks.
“Help Tina and Warren with the dinner,” I say, playfully rolling my eyes. “I swear you have your mind in the gutter.”
We eat our meals together most days, and when we don’t want to eat together, we don’t.
Everyone has space for themselves if they want, which was something Mack was careful about ensuring before the construction started.
“Let’s go. I wonder if Janie will have healed another of Adela’s wrinkles,” he says, leading the way inside.
“If only,” Adela murmurs.
We grin at each other.
Janie has, for now at least, stopped healing everyone she touches. The ability is still there, which we notice when Milo falls over and she heals him before his natural shifter healing abilities kick in. As much as she loves to argue with her little brother, they spend more time playing together than they do with anyone else.
As she gets older, she seems to be gaining more control over it.
I don’t know if she can heal a shifter’s soul the way omegas can, since she’s shown no sign of that ability yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she could.
Milo has shown no healing powers, but since omegas are only girls, I don’t think he ever will. But being a mother has taught me to always be prepared. If it happens, I don’t think I’d be too surprised.
I never believed I would ever have all the love I could ever dream of, but somehow, I have.
“You’re smiling again,” Mack says as we walk into the kitchen where Tina and Warren are laughing as they make dinner for us.
“Because of you, Mack Winters,” I tell him with a smile. “You changed my world for the best. I thought finding my mate would be the happiest day in my life. It wasn’t. It was finding you.”