The After Effects

Epilogue

~Five years later~

"And where do you think you are going?" Ivy glared at me, her hands on her hips. The stance pushing her stomach out more, showcasing her baby bump.

"To see Bear..." I trailed off and made a general gesture to the direction of the stables.

Ivy rolled her emerald green eyes as she sighed. "You do realize what time it is right?" She spoke while she walked to one of the heavy drapes in my room and straightened it. I nearly rolled my eyes at the action. Such a motherly move.

"Nearly midnight?" I made a rough guess.

Turning back to me, Ivy cracked a smile. "Can you promise me you'll at least be back before dawn? If Locke finds out I let you out, he'll kill me."

A smile on my face mirrored hers. "I promise."

"Give Ragnar some extra grain for me while you're at it," Ivy said while her hands refolded the clothes that the helpers had set out for me to use in the morning.

"Will do," I watched as Ivy kept adjusting things in my room and going through my closet.

"What?" She asked innocently.

"You don't even realize what you're doing, do you?" I asked her.

When she found out she was pregnant five months ago, the whole Northern territory had celebrated. Though not much had changed until recently when nesting fever had hit her hard. She was always fixing something and stressing over little things.

"Doing what?" Ivy paused in folding one of my dresses.

I simply flicked my eyes between my clothes and her, getting my point across without even saying anything.

"Oh hush, now go before I change my mind," Ivy threatened.

"If you change your mind, I'll go wake up your dragon." I fired back at her, the teasing in my voice evident.

Ivy eyes widened. "You wouldn't dare," she faked horror.

I, of course, was talking about Rorek. Who had been even more unbearably protective around her these last five months than usual, and that's saying something. There were very few times that Ivy could be found by herself, most of those times were at night when Rorek was "sleeping". Everybody but her knew that he was faking sleep, there was no way he didn't know about her late-night trips around the castle, in which she usually just wandered.

I chuckled and walked up to her. "I love you," I told her before kissing her cheek and running off.

A quiet, "I love you," followed me down the hall.

Passing by a mirror in one of the long corridors, I paused briefly.

Dressed in my usual black leather pants, I had paired my pants with a simple red t-shirt and tight black knee-high boots.

Growing up, I always had bright white hair. Over the past two years though, my hair had slowly shifted to a silvery-gray color. Tonight, I had it tied up in a ponytail, though it still hung to my lower back.

My stormy-gray eyes flickered in the mirror. I looked like no one else, my unique and natural coloring was unheard of even with Deples-non-human and non-animals beings that were gifted with powers, a term humans had recently coined up when the supernatural world revealed itself to everybody.

Continuing to my destination, I weaved through long and dark corridors. The occasional pair of guards my only interruption. Until finally, I slipped through a backdoor of the castle and jogged down the paved path that led to the Royal Stables.