Epilogue

Epilogue
OPAL

“Stupid girl!” he spits, tightening his hold around me. “You really think I’d let you win!”

I shake him off me and turn around to bite his leg. He cries out in pain and immediately shifts, but I heard the bone crack. I felt it in my mouth. His blood coats my tongue and makes me so damn nauseous, but I can’t focus on that right now. 

I’m fighting for my life here. 

If he gets away…we’re all dead. 

In wolf form, he snarls at me. I stand my ground, refusing to show just how terrified I am. He’s larger than me, and of course, there’s the issue of him having more experience fighting in this form than me. 

But I have to make do with what I have. 

His broken leg might be my salvation. 

I attack first, giving it all I have. He manages to evade quickly even though he’s at a disadvantage and hits me from behind. I slam against the nearest wall, pain washing over me. 

He licks his fangs and growls angrily before charging. 

I’m not as fast as him. He slams headfirst right into me and I see damned stars. I snap my teeth at him, using my paws to claw at his throat, but he rams his head into mine one last time and I get dizzy and land on my side. 

Walter circles me. Though his hind leg doesn’t touch the ground, he doesn’t need it to be faster or stronger than me. I should’ve aimed right, but I never shot a gun in my entire life. 

Is this how I’ll die?

I can almost hear his words. He’s mocking me. He snaps his teeth at me threateningly and I flinch. Get up, I tell myself. Don’t let him win! 

I have to remember what’s at stake here.

I try to get up. He lets me. I bet he’s starting to have fun right now. I lower my head and try to concentrate on the part I’ll attack. When I charge, I sink my teeth into his side and he howls in pain before twisting his body around and biting the fleshy part of my leg. 

Now, it’s my turn to howl. 

The pain is blinding. I think his teeth scraped against the bone. I try to crawl away from him, but he climbs on my back and closes his jaw around my neck. 

He just needs to bite down hard to kill me. 

It’s over. This is how I die. 

I close my eyes, hoping that this will make me feel the pain less, but then the sound of a gunshot makes my ears ring and his weight is gone. I open my eyes and see Bruce limping toward me, a hand fixed to his side. There’s dried blood all over it. 

“Opal,” he pants. “Are you alright, baby?”

Kyle comes up behind me and when he takes one look at me, he tells me, “Don’t shift. It’s going to be worse in human form.”

Quinton and Gwen come running, too, and when she takes a look at me, her eyes fill with tears and she sinks to her knees by my side. 

“Opal,” she says. “Oh, by the goddess. Are you okay? We have to get her out of here!”

Bruce limps right past me, and I know he’s heading toward Walter, who’s gurgling right now. Most likely choking on his own blood. I turn my head to look while Gwen wraps her arms around me, and see Bruce pointing the gun right at him. The expression on his face is one of ruthlessness. He won’t show any mercy. 

And that’s exactly what Walter deserves. 

The gun goes off for the second time. 

Walter Hart is dead. 

From there, Bruce joins my side and tells me, “It’s all going to be okay, alright baby? I promise.”

And he keeps this promise. 

The war is called off, and of course, all the Alphas who sided with Walter are executed. They knew what they were doing, yet couldn’t stop him. These men simply weren’t cut out to be leaders, and I can’t believe that they were even in charge of packs with such a greedy mentality. 

New Alphas are assigned to the packs with no leaders. It’s a long and painful process, and Bruce and I spend countless months trying to get things right. His bullet wound healed fast, but though the flesh in my leg is healed, I still feel the occasional twinge of pain in the bone. 

Maybe it’s psychological, because the doctors haven’t detected anything abnormal with the bone at all. I keep having nightmares of that precise moment and even though he’s dead, sometimes, I have this feeling that he’s around somewhere, watching and biding his time. 

It’s totally crazy. We all saw him die. He was buried. 

But it’s how I feel, and all I can do is work toward it. 

Quinton and Gwen get married. It was pretty clear from the moment they met that there was something between them. They explained to me that what I saw that night was a misunderstanding. I was so sure that Gwen betrayed me because I thought Quinton couldn’t be trusted. 

Now that it’s all resolved, we spend most of our free time together. It’s great.

The rogues are living in peace, too, and we try to help them as much as we can, but Kyle is stubborn. Being a rogue means living with no leadership or any constraints. He takes pleasure in figuring things out, so we don’t intervene. Occasionally, we see each other, and honestly? We get along. I guess the connection between us was because we were half-siblings and not anything else. 

His fiancée, Cassie, understood that, and now they’re married with a baby on the way. 

The Old Luna was arrested for her crimes. It wasn’t fair for her to be killed, especially because of her biological children, but spending the rest of her life in prison is exactly what she deserves for conspiring against her husband and betraying the entire country for Walter Hart.  

Megan has taken some time off. She’s busy traveling to neighboring countries, and it’s unclear whether or not she’s going to come back. This place has terrible memories for her. She lost a lot. It’s easy to understand her motivations. 

When she comes back, we’ll welcome her with open arms. And that’s what matters. 

As for Bruce and me, well, we’re more in love than ever, and we’ve made a promise to each other to never lie about anything, not to each other. 

We’ve been happier than ever. 

I walk into his office after the day has ended and all the meetings have come to an end. Bruce’s back is facing me. He’s pouring himself a drink. 

“Baby, is that you?”

“Yeah,” I answer, smiling as I clutch the pregnancy test in my right hand. “I have something I wanted to tell you.”

He whirls around to face me, smiling. Maybe he can hear the excitement in my voice, or maybe not. I approach his desk. He meets me halfway. 

“What is it?”

He wraps his arms around me and I decide that it’s the perfect opportunity to hold the test between us. He takes it from me, a furrow forming between his brows as he tries to make sense of what he’s looking at. 

“What…you’re pregnant?”

I nod, laughter spilling out of me and he kisses me tenderly. I’m bursting at the seams with happiness. This symbolizes a new chapter in our lives, and honestly? I’m looking forward to everything. The tears. The laughter. The pain. The joy. Everything that makes life…life, essentially. 

As long as we’re together, nothing can tear us apart.