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EPILOGUE

AVERY

A week after the events of that awful night, things had gotten more or less back to normal. Ashton had mostly put it all behind him. I truly envied the way kids could push through and forget. He would have memories and flashbacks of it all, sure, but all in all, he seemed mostly fine.

I wasn’t, of course.

Even though he was nearly sixteen, I’d become a helicopter mom again like I had when he’d been a toddler. Whenever he was out of my sight for too long, I got anxious. It was getting better, but it would take time. For his part, he didn’t act like he cared.

“Mom, I can make my own sandwich,” he said as I pulled his plate away and set about finishing his lunch.

“I know, but I want to help. Go sit down. Do you want some chips and a candy bar from the pantry?”

Chuckling, he raised his hands in defeat. “Sure. Why not?” He walked over to the kitchen table.

“Are you gonna make me a sandwich, too?” Cole asked with a grin.

I glanced at him, one eyebrow quirked. “Your hands aren’t broken. Plus, you didn’t have to spend all that time living with a psycho.”

“Fair enough.”

“But yes, I’ll make you one,” I conceded.

Ashton cleared his throat. “So, summer is almost over. Should we look at getting me registered for school?”

“Wow,” Cole said with a sigh. “You’re right. It is about over. Crazy how fast it went by.”

Ashton frowned bitterly. “I hate that I spent most of it with that crazy creep. It would have been nice to relax and have fun all summer.”

Thinking about Kyle was enough to make my skin crawl. The guy most certainly had been a creep.

Langston’s father, Archer, had used some of his pull to cover the murder of Kyle and his men.

He’d said they’d all perished in an accidental fire caused by a lightning strike.

The thing I’d been most worried about was the strange scientist. Neither Ashton nor I had seen him in our time in the mansion.

Archer had handled that as well. He’d come to us the next morning with more information on the guy.

Sitting in the living room along with Langston and Zayde, Archer had explained who the man was.

“His name is Dr. Clauss Schueffler. He worked for the government for many years. He was a leading researcher in shifter and human biology as well as genetics. He was fired a few years ago after an ethics inquiry into his work.”

“Not surprising,” Cole grumbled. “I doubt this guy has anything in the way of morals.”

Archer nodded grimly. “He was caught using humans on death row as guinea pigs. We believe it was his first attempt at creating this forced shifter drug. We also located a journal in his personal office that gave a bit more insight. He is obsessed with shifters. From what we read, his true motivation was trying to become one himself. The day he was terminated, he vanished, along with his research notes. We think he managed to get twisted up in Kyle’s little mafia operation and used his financing to continue his experiments. ”

“He’s still out there?” I asked, icy fear crawling up the insides of my ribcage.

Archer grinned. “Nope. He’s been apprehended.

Our agents caught him at the Atlanta airport.

He’d purchased a one-way ticket to Morocco.

We have no extradition with them, so if he’d boarded that plane, he’d have vanished into the wind.

Thankfully, as smart as he is with genetics, he’s equally dumb when it comes to being a criminal.

He tried to hide the purchase by using one of Kyle’s credit cards.

The ticket was flagged, and when his boarding pass was scanned, my team took him in.

He won’t be any trouble for anyone anymore. ”

“Thank God.” I sighed.

“Uh, what about the girl?” Ashton asked. “Sydney?”

The strange look on my son’s face made me uncomfortable.

“No sign of her,” Archer said. “We’re still looking, but she’s gone underground. We’ll update you if we find her.”

Archer and the others left soon after, and I gave Ashton a hard look. “What was that about?”

“What was what about?” Ashton said, but his eyes were wide with embarrassment.

My son had the hots for that girl. A girl who was five years older than him.

“No way, mister. Not on my watch,” I said. “I’m glad she saved us, but she is far too old for a kid your age.”

Ashton’s cheeks and neck went red. “I didn’t… well, that’s not exactly what I meant. I was worried about her, and?—”

“That’ll do,” Cole said, breaking in. “Stop giving the kid hell, babe.”

We’d let it drop, but even now, a week later, it still hung at the back of my mind. My baby wasn’t really a baby anymore. Soon, he would have a real girlfriend. In a few years, he’d leave for college. Time was speeding up, and I didn’t like it.

I thought about that now as Ashton and Cole talked over lunch.

“You’ve still got two weeks of summer,” Cole said. “You should make the best of it. Brayden and the other guys from the pack are probably still hanging around. You could get some ball games in with them, hang out a bit.”

“That would be cool,” Ashton said, then took a massive bite from his sandwich.

“Speaking of the pack,” I said. “What time is the meeting today?”

“In an hour,” Cole said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

Ashton swallowed hard and glanced from Cole to me. “I’m nervous,” he admitted.

Cole put a hand on his shoulder. “No reason to be. These are your people. Hell, you’re basically part of the pack, anyway. This is just a formality.”

Ashton nodded, but he drummed his fingers on the table and tapped his foot anxiously.

By the time we arrived at the meeting an hour later, he was fidgeting and visibly uncomfortable. Apparently, standing in front of hundreds of people was more terrifying to a teenager than being kidnapped.

Cole walked to the front of the stage. I took Ashton’s hand in mine. He squeezed back, and I hoped he found some reassurance from my support.

“I want to thank everyone for coming,” Cole said, his voice booming out across the room. “You’ve stood by me and my family in a time of need, and I can never thank you enough for that. None of you had any reason to risk your lives for me and mine, but you did, and that will never be forgotten.

“There are a few things I need to mention that were touched on in our last meeting,” Cole went on.

“With the help of a friend, we’ve managed to retrieve all the money Kyle Alexander took from our pack.

We’ve also reached out to many of the creditors that were making life difficult.

They understand the situation, and I believe we are in a much better place than we were four months ago. ”

A collective sigh went through the crowd, their faces showing relief and joy.

Now that Kyle’s threat had been taken care of, the pack’s attention had turned to their financial difficulties.

Knowing that Cole and Farrah had done everything they could to get the pack on better footing took a load off everyone’s mind.

“With that out of the way, I would like to officially accept the role of pack alpha. I know I’ve been the acting alpha for a few months, but I now want you to know that I am here to stay.

I’m here to lead, and I’m here to live. I am not running.

No matter how bad things might get, I’ll be right here doing my best to protect you and the land we call home. ”

A surprisingly large eruption of applause and cheers rumbled through the room. Trent, who sat toward the back of the room, gave Cole a thumbs-up and grinned from ear to ear.

“Thank you,” Cole said. “That being said, I also want to officially introduce someone else. You’ve already met my mate Avery, but I wanted to bring my son Ashton up.” Cole waved for Ash to join him.

“Go on,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”

Ashton looked at me with an expression of terror and stood on trembling legs. Cole took his hand and tugged him to the front of the stage.

“Harbor Mills,” Cole shouted. “May I introduce you to Ashton, son of the alpha and heir to the Harbor Mills pack.”

The next round of cheers nearly deafened me.

I clamped my hands over my ears. If Ashton was embarrassed, he didn’t show it.

He only gazed out at the hundreds of people shouting for him, clapping and whistling.

All the fear and trepidation vanished from his face.

Instead, he watched the celebrating crowd with a childlike grin on his face.

After the meeting, Cole drove us to the hospital to check on Dallas.

We hadn’t known how bad his bullet wound was until Farrah had called us from the hospital the day after the attack.

Kyle had shot him in the liver. Had he not been a shifter with increased healing, he wouldn’t have survived the ride to the hospital.

Even then, he’d nearly died twice during surgery.

They’d had to use the defibrillator on him one of those times.

Cole had taken that news hard, and now made an effort to stop by at least once a day.

Dallas had a room to himself. When we arrived, he looked up from the tray of grayish hospital food and smiled.

“Back again?” he asked.

“Of course,” Cole said as we took our seats around his room.

“They said I’ll be getting out tomorrow or the next day,” Dallas said.

“That’s good news,” I said, giving him a heartfelt smile.

I’d hated Dallas for taking Ashton from me, but he’d risked his life to get him back to me and had almost died for the trouble.

Everything he’d done had been because he was terrified of what Kyle might do otherwise.

Perhaps by convincing Kyle to kidnap Ashton, he’d saved his life.

Maybe the madman would have chosen to simply kill my son instead.

In my mind, Dallas’s penance had been paid.

“What’s the plan for after you get out?” Cole asked.

Dallas poked at something that wobbled. “No clue. My apartment is gone. Kyle was paying for that. The room I used at the mansion is ashes now. I might look for an extended-stay motel or something until I get on my feet again.”