Page 64 of Kidnapped Rejected Mate
Now, as we walk, Aurela’s hands are in front of her, glowing slightly, and I feel the magic pushing through the air like warm water.
That blue flower is still here, but now surrounded by other Coloradan wildflowers, a patchwork of colors, textures, and delicate flowers.
“You’re amazing,” I whisper, turning to her and pulling her into my arms. And when she puts her palms flat against me, that healing energy surges through my veins, as syrupy as a mother’s love.
“I know,” she whispers before turning and pecking my lips with hers.
“Come on,” I murmur, letting my gaze skip down her, taking in her golden hair in the sun, her dress fluttering around her calves. “We should probably go get ready.”
Without a word, she takes my hand, and we turn, walking back toward town, knowing things in Silverville are only going to get better from here.
***
“Thank you all so much for coming.”
Xeran stands at the front of the pack hall in front of a podium. Phina stands on one side of him, and Valerie and Lachlan on the other. Aurela, Felix, Maeve, Kalen, and I are in the audience, looking up at them, holding glasses of champagne—nonalcoholic, for Aurela—and just waiting for the moment we can toast.
Holding up a piece of paper, Xeran projects his voice through the room. “I’m sure you’re all aware of what this is, but an occasion like this allows me to repeat it. This document is the amendment to the pack articles that is long, long overdue.”
A raucous cheer rolls through the crowd. Xeran shakes his head, looking down at the paper and waiting for the sound to die down.
It strikes me in this moment that he already looks a lot like his father, the thick black beard he’s growing starting to speck with white, creating the salt-and-pepper look Holden Sorel sported the entire time I knew him.
“Right,” Xeran says, laughter still in his voice when it’s finally quiet enough for him to go on. “I agree with all of you. This is an important moment in our pack history—and, indeed, in the movement across every pack in this country. It’s time to move toward acceptance, to extend love to the members of our pack we’ve previously relegated to the outskirts.”
Another cheer, another moment in which Xeran holds his hands up, gesturing for us to calm down. But it’s hard—I feel like the bubbles rising in my glass. Buoyant.
Like, after years of strife and firefighting, aching over Aurela and thinking my life would never improve, I’m finally staring down the best years in front of me.
I reach down and take Aurela’s hand. When she slips hers into mine, I feel the same push of gentle, calm energy she exuded up on the ridge earlier. When I look at her, she’s staring up at the stage, smiling warmly, her eyes shining in the overhead lights. Her hair is pulled to the side in an elegant bun, and she wears a blush pink dress that contrasts with her tan skin. She’s radiant, the most beautiful woman in this entire room.
She’s glowing, and not just from the pregnancy. From finally coming into herself, finding a hero inside her. Accepting her power and seeing those around her accept it, too.
“I’d like to thank every magic wielder in this pack who fought for our ability to make this change,” Xeran says. “And I’d like to acknowledge those who had to live their entire lives in fear, in hiding. That is no more. In this pack, we will accept all who carry our scent, who live in this town. We are that family, and that means when we sit down together, we show love to the non-shifters, to the magic wielders, to the omegas, alphas, betas, and everything in between.”
This time, the applause is loud enough that Xeran doesn’t even bother trying to tell us to quiet down. Instead, he sets the paper down on the podium, takes a breath, and picks up his pen, quickly scribbling his signature at the bottom. Lachlan follows, then Valerie, then Phina. They’ve been working on this for the longest, so it makes sense that they fulfill the three-pack signatures required to make it official.
When it’s done, I turn, gathering Aurela up into my arms, kissing her deeply. I get the sense that everyone around us is doing the same, embracing their families and celebrating this moment.
Aurela pulls away first, breathing hard and looking up at me, her eyes darting back and forth between mine. “Do you getthe sense that a new chapter is starting for us?” she asks, her voice euphoric, breathless, lighter than air.
I lean down, pressing the tip of my nose to hers, breathing in the new scent she carries, one that mixes ours together, taking two families and slowly turning them into something new.
“Yeah, I do,” I say, slipping my fingers through her hair and reveling in the looping, simple joy that reverberates through the room. “And this chapter doesn’t have asinglewildfire in it.”
“Oh,” she says, smiling and tipping her head to catch my lips. “Well, then let’s hope it’s a long one.”
But before we can kiss, an arm flies around my neck, and Felix is there, his bubblegum-pink hair coated in drops of champagne and confetti. “I’ll cheers to that!” he says, his glass lifted.
More and more glasses join ours—Xeran, Phina, and Nora to my left, Valerie and Lachlan across from us, Maeve slipping in next to Felix on my right, and Kalen appearing next to his brother, clinking his glass with ours just before the band starts up, drowning out the sound of our glasses with a vibrant, beautiful song.
Nora leans over, whispering something to her mother, and Phina holds a hand up, pushing the sound around us away until our group stands in the center of the room in complete silence, other shifters dancing and partying around us.
I look around, meeting the others’ eyes, seeing my joyous perspective on the future reflected back at me.
“To Silverville’s future,” Nora says, raising her glass, looking every bit the future alpha supreme in her tidy skirt and jacket, her hair pulled back tight in braids on one side of her head.
Xeran will deny it for the rest of his life, but I know I see a tear slide down his cheek in that moment.
“To Silverville,” he echoes, then we hold our glasses up together again, one generation of shifters passing a brighter, stronger future to the next.
*****
THE END