#Chapter 500 – Happily Ever
Ella
“Nope,” Sinclair says, heaving himself out of bed and grabbing his phone off the bedside table as he does. ” I can’t live like this, Ella – I’m calling Roger, I’ve got to know – ”
“Dominic!” I say, laughing and grabbing for him, trying to catch the edge of his pajamas and failing because I’ve got a sleeping baby in my arms and another pressed warmly to my side. ” Don’t, come back!”
“I just!” he says, pressing the phone to his ear and running a frantic hand through his hair. “You tell me that there’s drama in her life, but that it’s no big deal, and that it’s girl stuff? What the hell am I supposed to do with that for the next twenty years!?”
“You’re supposed to sit down,” I say, laughing harder now and patting the mattress on his side of the bed, still warm from his delicious body heat. ” Honestly, if this is the way you react after all of our daughters’ baptisms, we’re not having them anymore – ”
Sinclair sighs and pulls the phone from his face, slumping back down on the bed. “Fine,” he sighs. “Just boys, after this.”
“Mmkay, sweetie,” I murmur, even though my mind flashes back to the vision my mother’s priests gave me so long ago. We’ve got two more coming I think a boy and a girl. But who knows what their own futures hold.
“I’m glad you came to your senses and hung up the phone,” I murmur, scooting myself and my two children closer to him, my voice a little smug.
“I didn’t,” Sinclair mutters, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Roger just didn’t pick up.”
I grin at him, shaking my head. “Why can’t you just take good news for what it is? Human families don’t get any insight when their children are born, and Roger and Cora told us that Ariel has an incredible life. The drama – it’s going to happen whether or not you know what it is.”
“Well, you know what it is,” he says, sending me a rueful little glare.
“I do not,” I say, laughing and resting my head on his shoulder. “Cora knows, and she has sworn Roger to secrecy. Ariel’s life – it’s her business. I think we should be just grateful that we know our two children are going to grow to be healthy and happy.”
“I know,” Sinclair sighs, pulling me closer, relaxing and letting himself feel his exhaustion, finally, as the morning light streams around the curtains that we’ve pulled shut so we can get some sleep. He turns his head and kisses my hair after a moment, which makes me smile as I look down at my baby girl, my thumb tracing long strokes along my beautiful son’s cheek.
We stay that way for a long moment, peace and contentment radiating through the four of us and along our bonds.
“Dominic,” I say quietly, my mind turning softly. “What do you think? If you had the chance…would you want to know? What your godmother saw, what was all laid out for you by the Goddess?”
“What do you mean?” he murmurs, and I turn my head to look at him, smiling when I see that his eyes are moving between our two perfect kids.
“I mean,” I say after a long moment, and his green eyes shift to me. “If you… had a chance. To know that…your first mating was going to eventually fail. But that there was me, on the other end of it. And all the confusion at the start when we met and I was already pregnant with your kid, and everything we went through, and the two beautiful children at the end – ”
“Alongside a wonderful partnership,” he murmurs, tugging me close and kissing my cheek, “which, honestly, is my favorite part – ”
“Even more than the kids!?” I gasp, my mouth falling open a bit.
“I mean, the kids,” he says, shrugging as if they’re not much, which makes me laugh. But then he goes a little rigid as he realizes something, raising his eyes to glare at me a bit. “Wait, are you saying you like the kids more than me!?”
My laugher bursts from me now as I shake my head at him. “No, Dominic. I think – I mean, I think we both mean the same thing. It’s our little family that results from all of it, and each part of it is individually wonderful, and of course you are at the center of all of it for me. You’re – you’re my mate, my love.” I shake my head, smiling at him. “The center of my universe. But the whole universe we’ve built, Dominic it’s all wonderful.”
“That’s precisely what I mean, and how I feel,” he says with a steady sigh, tilting my face up to press a soft kiss to my mouth. “You just say it way better than me.”
“Well,” I say, shaking my hair back over my shoulders haughtily. “I have a way with words.”
“Mmhmm,” he hums, dropping his head a little to press a kiss to the underside of my jaw and then to my neck, sending a shiver through me. ” Amongst other things.”
I smile and wait for him to lift his head again, bringing his gaze back to mine. ” So?” I say, pushing, truly wanting his answer. “What do you think? If your godmother saw all of this – would you have wanted to know?”
He takes a deep breath, thinking it through. “Well,” he says, contemplative, “on one hand, it would have saved me a great deal of stress and sadness at some points in my life, to know that this was waiting for me that this was the true, wonderful hand the Goddess was waiting to deal for me.”
He passes some memories down the bond to me in a flash of explanation for what he means when he says a great deal of stress and sadness. I see the loss of his mother, the years he spent tortured, pining for his first mate when she was with Roger, and then their tumultuous marriage, the wanting a child and never being blessed with one, the mating bond he eventually rejected. Then the years after that of just feeling …empty. And then of meeting me, and wanting me, and wanting our child but not knowing what it meant, to have a child with a woman he thought was human…
I nod, truly understanding. “It would have helped me to,” I say. And then I do the same, passing my own memories to him. The horrible years with only Cora by my side, when we each had to play mother and sister to each other. The horrible unknowing years when I was at my darkest point, and then my terrible ex-boyfriend, who I had truly thought I loved – but who betrayed me so deeply. The terrible longing for a child I thought I would never have…
“But,” Sinclair says, staring deep into my eyes and passing the warm balm of his love down our bond to me, wiping away those terrible memories. “As much as it would have been good to know what was waiting, Ella…it’s important to me that we chose this, and we fought for it – every step of the way. That it wasn’t just some fate that the Goddess gave to us. That even if it was fated…we wanted it, we wanted each other. We’d have picked this life anyway, even if it wasn’t fate.”
Tears slip down my cheeks as I nod at him, because now he’s the one saying it just right.
“I’d pick you, Dominic,” I say, my voice shaking with my love for him. “In a thousand lifetimes, a thousand chances to make the same choices – I’d do it all again.”
He shakes his head at me as tears fill his own eyes and he leans forward, pulling me against him while somehow miraculously managing not to crush our children between us as he holds me tight in his arms.
“So, I guess it wouldn’t matter,” he murmurs against my hair as I sniff back my tears and nod. “Knowing or not? I’ve got you now, and our wonderful life, and it’s worth everything we paid to get here. You’re my everything, trouble.”
And I laugh, pulling back a little and shaking my head at him and giving him a smile even. “I think we’re obliged now,” I say, nodding down at our little girl, “to pass the ‘trouble’ nickname fully down to Ariel.”
“Nah,” Sinclair says, smirking at me as he moves his thumbs over my cheeks, wiping away all of my tears. ” She might be baby trouble, but you’ll always be my trouble. And you’ll always be mine.”
And I nod, and smile softly at him, because…well, because that feels just right.
“And what about this one?” I say, running my hand over Rafe’s soft hair, smiling down at his little body pressed close to me, his mouth just lightly open, his long lashes dark against his chubby cheeks. “He’s not trouble?”
“This little guy?” Sinclair says, grinning as he reaches out a hand to rub his son’s back. “No way – he’s too sweet to be much trouble. He’s going to be the best kid.”
“You’re going to have to teach him to act tough,” I say with a little laugh, “or everyone’s going to see right through him and take advantage of his soft heart.”
“No problem,” Sinclair says with a grin. “We’ll build him some steely armor to protect that sweet heart of his.”
I smile too as I look at my son, but my mind is on his father, who is so much the same. My sweetheart Alpha – the scariest and most powerful man in the world, probably, but also the kindest person I’ve ever met. A good King, a better mate – a wonderful father.
God, how did I get to be so lucky?
“I love you, Dominic,” I sigh, resting my head against him and closing my eyes.
“I love you too, Ella,” he murmurs in reply, his arm still holding me tight as we both drift off into a doze, our much- loved, long-desired perfect son sleeping between us. Our wonderful, brand new baby girl still curled against the crook of my arm.
And, even though I know I shouldn’t let myself doze like this – that I should put Rafe in his crib, and Ariel in her bassinet –
That Dominic and I should lay down and get some proper sleep stretched out so we don’t wake up with aching necks
That I’m going to be up in twenty minutes anyway when Ariel cries, needing to be fed or changed
Well. I just let myself fall into the doze anyway. Because everything is just so perfect right now in this moment that not a single part of me wants to disturb it.
And so, curled warm against my mate with my arms wrapped around the children I always dreamed I’d have but thought I never could, I sleep in complete peace, content in the knowledge that when I do wake up?
It’s going to be the start of the rest of my wonderful life – one I’m so thrilled I get to live with my Alpha by my side.
THE END
