The Rogue

Epilogue

For once, the nightmares had subsided. They were not the reason I was awake at such a late hour. My eyes moved from the ceiling overhead to the little form curled up in the sheets beside me. Beneath the sheet, I reached for her. Her presence was the anchor for my soul to this world, a world I often wanted to abandon.

She stirred in her sleep for a moment, mumbling something indecipherable as well as my name. I ran my fingers through her hair. My touch wandered down to her waist, where I let my hand settle. Her skin was warm beneath mine.

I thought about how hard she'd made me work to get her in this bed so many months ago. Now she never slept anywhere else. My thumb found her left hand and ran across the hard, cold surface of the ring that sat upon a finger. The ring that officially, legally, and eternally bound us to each other, though our hearts had been bound together long before.

After so much time spent in confusion without any sense of direction, I could feel clarity here. Fate had enjoyed its share of tormenting us and now settled for our own peace. Things would be as they were supposed to be. That didn't mean it would be easy. If I hadn't learned by now that having a human anima was not for the weak, I didn't deserve to have her.

All of the pain was worth it, though. She was worth it. She always would be. The human who saved me from myself, my own personal angel. I cuddled up against her and kissed her cheek. She had been through all of this change with me, whether physically or spiritually.

When I thought about our future, I saw the textbooks stacked on the desk in her makeshift office downstairs. I thought about the crib Titus was carving for his newborn pup. I considered the company of my mother who now lived in the second bedroom on the first floor. Then I dared to open my eyes a little further and see Faye curled up beside me with life beating inside of her, a life that required us both.

The past we had survived was long behind us. Occasionally, I would see the nostalgia flicker across her face when she thought she alone, and I knew she was thinking of her parents, her friends, or the life she left behind. She didn't appear on the news stations anymore as a missing girl. After a few months, she had dared to send her family a letter, begging them to stop the search. Although we both knew it was unlikely, she promised to visit them once everything here settled down.

Sometimes I allowed myself to wonder how her life would have turned out if, by come chance, I had been able to set her free, let her go. Her dream of becoming a doctor could have come true, perhaps. Or maybe she would have met a normal, simple human who would have married her and had children with her.

That was where I always stopped myself. There was no point dwelling on the what-ifs and maybes. Fate or God or some force had drawn us together, and without me there never would have been her. Without her, there certainly never would have been me. So the notion of giving her a better life with a simple human was nonsense, because that life wasn't what she was cut out for. She was born for this, for us, just as much as I was born to be Alpha.

Life, my mother liked to say, was not fashioned to be easy or kind, because what type of people would that make? People without passion, without purpose, and without hope. If the bigger trials made for stronger people, Faye and I would be no weaker than the swells in the ocean or the wind of a hurricane.

Once, I was a Beta with a hot temper and no ambition. Then I was made into an Alpha with little guidance and no experience. When I became a Rogue, I thought I would never be anything else again. At last, I now found myself restored to Alpha.

This time I would fill the shoes placed at my feet. This time I would conquer the trials set before me. This time I would love and fight like I never had before.

Because this time I knew what I was fighting for.