Chapter 137 Epilogue II - The Guardians' Rest
Chapter 137 Epilogue II - The Guardians' Rest
The Last Holdouts
Moonlight cut through the pitch-black canopy of the Scandinavian pines, like some silver blade, and yeah, it threw those dramatic high-contrast shadows across the blinding white snow.
The vibe of the frozen north was sharp, kind of unforgiving, and weirdly hyper realistic. Every crunch from our heavy combat boots sounded like a gunshot in that silent, dead air, not a single real breath to interrupt it.
Valda went a few paces ahead of me. The scarred Guardian moved with this fluid, predatory smoothness, like her heavy thermal tactical gear was only pretending to hide what she really was. That pure star-metal broadsword riding on her back caught the moon in a clean gleam, cinematic lighting or whatever… but it was also a constant quiet threat to anything that decided to lurk in the dark.
I tugged at my collar, heavy coat, and cold pressing in everywhere. As the former Alpha of the global Syndicates, I was used to leading armies into ash-choked warzones. Only tonight wasn’t like that, though. No marching lines, no ranks, no nothing. Just me and Valda, moving into the center of rogue territory.
"We are crossing their perimeter," Valda murmured. Her voice was low and gravelly, and it still managed to make my spine react, involuntarily, like the cold wasn’t the only thing doing the damage. "I smell them. Fear and wet fur."
"Keep your blade sheathed, Guardian," I answered, my tone gruff but steady, quiet enough that the wind had to work for it. "We aren't here to spill blood. The Queen was very clear."
Valda paused, and she looked back over her shoulder. The moonlight grabbed the jagged raised scars on the left side of her face, those souvenirs from a whole lifetime spent protecting Elara back when the rest of the world acted like it didn’t know her name.
Maybe for other people those scars would read as intimidating. For me, they were the most beautiful, ultra realistic map of loyalty and survival I had ever laid eyes on.
"I always follow Luna's orders, Thorne," Valda said, a faint razor-sharp smirk warming up her lips. "But if they lunge at you, I make no promises."
We stepped into a clearing that felt too open, too exposed, like the forest itself was holding its breath.
Surrounding us, in the deep shadows, were dozens of massive feral wolves. Their eyes glowed a sickly desperate yellow. And in the center stood the leader, hulking and scarred, not shifted at all. His hands shook hard as he clutched a rusted hunting rifle. Absolute last remnant, broken old world residue. The final pack that refused to attend the summit at Aurora Citadel terrified the new King and Queen of the Stars, who would execute them for what they had done in the past.
"That's far enough, Syndicate dog!" the rogue leader barked, lifting the rifle. His breath hitched in his chest, like his body was arguing with his mouth. "We don't bow to the iron god! We die on our feet!"
The Queen’s Mercy
I didn’t raise my hands, and I didn’t move for the heavy sidearm at my hip. I just stood there, flat footed, projecting that calm unyielding Alpha authority like I was daring the universe to disagree.
"No one has to die tonight, Marcus," I said. My voice carried over the howling wind as if it were nothing. "The war is over. The Aethelgard are ashes. The Void is sealed. The Earth belongs to the packs again."
"Lies!" Marcus spat, though his rifle grip kept shaking, betrayingly. "Kade Vance is a monster! He swallowed a god! He'll crush us all just to prove he can!"
Valda stepped forward, and her hand rested like it belonged there on the pommel of her star-metal sword. The wolves in the shadows instantly showed teeth, like they recognized the kind of danger she brought—unleashed, unbottled, not the tame kind.
"The Prime could have crushed you from his balcony in Aurora," Valda said, her words dripping with that terrifying conviction. "Without blinking. He could have dropped a gravity well on this forest and turned you all into diamond dust. But he didn’t."
She took another step and walked straight into the high-contrast beam of moonlight.
"Because the Luna Prime forbade it," Valda kept going, those feral gold eyes pinning the rogue leader in place. " Elara Vance knows what it means to be hunted. She knows what it is to freeze in the dark, cast out by her own kind. She didn't send an army to slaughter you. She sent us to bring you home."
I watched Marcus. His face, and that tension in his jaw, started to crack. The undeniable kind of truth in Valda’s words cut through their paranoia, quick and hot, like a knife through butter that had been pretending to be solid.
"Aurora Citadel is a sanctuary," I added, my voice softening just a fraction. "There is food. There is warmth. There is a place for your pups to grow up without staring at the sky in terror. Lower the weapon, Marcus. Accept the Queen's peace."
For a long, agonizing minute, all that existed was the wind, worrying the pines, dragging its howl forward and back.
Then, slowly, Marcus lowered the rifle. It left his numb fingers, clanging into the deep snow and disappearing there as if it had always belonged to the ground. In the shadows, the massive feral wolves began to whimper, their aggressive postures melting—rearranging themselves—until they shifted back into their shivering, exhausted human forms.
We had done it. The world finally felt whole, not just in stories, but for real.
The Fire and the Scars
Two hours later, Marcus and his pack were loaded safely onto the massive, heated Syndicate transports waiting at the edge of the forest. I told the pilot to head back to Aurora Citadel, but Valda and I stayed behind.
We needed a moment, really. A chance to let the adrenaline from the last two years finally drain out of our blood, for once, and stay drained.
We found a small abandoned hunting cabin miles from the clearing. I built a roaring fire in the hearth, and the flames lit everything up in brilliant orange. They threw dramatic flickering shadows against the rotting wooden walls, like the cabin was trying to remember better days.
Valda sat on a heavy fur rug in front of the hearth. She had stripped off her heavy tactical jacket, tossing it aside like it wasn’t part of her anymore.
She wore a simple tight black tank top. Her arms looked incredibly toned, muscular, and steady, the kind of strength that didn’t need to
I walked in over there, holding two battered tin cups, full of this harsh, burning whiskey I had grabbed from the transport’s emergency stash. I sat down kind of hard beside her, our shoulders just brushing like it was nothing, but it wasn’t.
“To the Queen,” I toasted quietly, offering her a cup.
“To the Queen,” Valda matched. She just knocked the whiskey back in one smooth, practiced gulp, and then she let out this pleased hiss, like it tasted of victory or something.
“You were brilliant back there,” I said, watching her profile. The firelight, all cinematic, like it owned the place, traced the sharp aristocratic line of her jaw and that brutal curve of her lips. “You spoke like a diplomat, Guardian. I didn’t know you had that in you.”
Valda scoffed, a dark, cynical sound. “I’m a blade, Thorne. I know how to cut. Elara is the one that knows how to heal, I just.. repeated what she trained me with.”
She turned her head toward me, and somehow the air just left my lungs.
For months, we fought back-to-back, side by side. We bled together in the ash wastes; we stared down the absolute end of the universe with our shoulders pressed together like it could stop fate. But never, not once did we get the “luxury” of staring at each other without a weapon showing up between us.
Without thinking, I reached out.
My calloused heavy fingers brushed over the raised jagged scars on the left side of her face, slow and deliberate, like I could read her history by touch.
Valda’s breath hitched. Her whole body went rigid, warrior instincts snapping awake and screaming at the vulnerability of it. She usually hated it when anyone studied her scars too closely, because she treated them like some kind of brand from her brutal past.
“Thorne,” she whispered, and the warning vibrated in her throat.
“They are beautiful,” I rumbled. My voice dropped low, raw, not asking permission. I didn’t pull away. I let my thumb trace the line of scar down toward her jawline. “Every single one. It’s the route map of a woman who refused to fold. The fiercely loyal, utterly terrifying, devastatingly gorgeous woman I have ever known.”
Valda’s feral gold eyes widened just a little. The hard impenetrable shell around her heart, finally, started to crack under that visceral undeniable heat between us.
“I am broken, Alpha,” Valda breathed, and her voice shook, only a fraction. “I don’t know how to be soft. I don’t know how to do peace.”
“Neither do I,” I admitted, leaning in. The fire’s ambient heat was nothing compared to that absolute magnetic pull drawing us close. “So we learn it… together.”
Valda didn’t hesitate this time. The hardened guardian closed the distance hard and fast, her hands tangling violently in the collar of my shirt as she pulled my mouth to hers.
The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was a collision, like two veterans slamming into the same shelter after surviving the end of the world. It was desperate, bruising, and intensely, unmistakably passionate. I wrapped my massive arms around her waist, dragging her onto my lap, and the whiskey and the adrenaline lit a wildfire between us.
Valda straddled me, her hands moving frantically across my chest, searching for that warmth of my skin under my shirt. She broke the kiss just long enough to look down at me, chest heaving, eyes lit with this fierce, victorious spark like she’d won something back.
“You talk too much, Syndicate dog,” she growled, almost playful, her lips swollen.
“Make me stop,” I said back, pulling her down toward me again.
Outside the cabin, the frozen wind howled over the snow, but inside, the war was truly, finally over. The Guardians had earned their rest.