Unstoppable (Their Shifter Academy #6) - May Dawson Page 0,116
nodded, but his gaze flickered to someone beside me, and I realized Clearborn had just come to stand next to me.
“Do you want this, sir?” I asked, offering him the crown. I was eager to get rid of the priceless relic.
“I can lock it up for you,” Clearborn said. “But I think for better or worse, it belongs to you, Ms. Northsea.”
He held out his hand, and I passed it to him, but he was right. I still felt the weight of the power I wielded when I had the crown, and what it meant for wolves and witches alike.
“Good job out there,” he told me. “You and your friends should get some rest. We’ve got it from here.”
As I headed down the halls of the academic building, fatigue seemed to settle into my bones. Clearborn was absolutely right—I was exhausted. We all were. It had been one crazy year, and it had been capped off by a few crazy weeks as we fought to protect the packs.
But as I walked down the stairs, I saw Silas coming toward me, and for a moment, all that exhaustion fled. I hadn’t gotten the chance to talk to him yet—to really talk to him—and I was worried about him.
Silas smiled at me when he saw me, though, his eyes brightening in a way that no one could fake, as if I lit up his world.
“Maddie,” he said, wrapping me up in a hug. He hugged me as if he needed me, but when I looked up at him, he gripped the back of my neck and kissed me hard. Silas’s fingers on the back of my neck reminded me of Echo, but then, Silas was Echo too. He was complicated.
And he was mine.
He kissed me breathless, and when we pulled apart, I told him, “I’m glad you’re here.”
It was an understatement. I was amazed he was here, after all his debate about which world he truly belonged in.
“Me too,” he said.
“Are you sad too?”
His lips tilted up at the corners. “Yes. It turns out happy endings can be… complicated.”
He studied my face, then told me, “But I’m more happy than sad.”
“That’s a start,” I said.
“That’s a start,” he agreed. He kissed me again, a soft, tender kiss this time. “Let’s go find our…”
He trailed off. Friends? They were so much more than friends.
Family?
Whatever he and the other men were, we belonged together.
That night, we all gathered at Chase’s house for a big dinner. Skyla and Blake were there too, and we all talked about what had happened over the past few weeks. I knew they still had a big adjustment ahead of them, but we’d manage it together, as a family. For their parts, they both seemed tough—just like I’d expect form Chase’s younger siblings.
The house felt full of love and laughter, and as Silas grinned and toasted and laughed with them, I hoped he was starting to feel peace with the choice he’d had to make. I knew Silas would always do what had to be done.
But our boy wonder deserved to be happy too.
Afterward, Chase and Skyla conspicuously made themselves absent, and I changed into my swimsuit. When I stepped out onto the deck, night had fallen. The stars dotting the sky weren’t as bright as they were over the Fae world or the Greyworld, places that were more unspoiled and light-polluted than our own world, but that was okay.
This was our home, and it didn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.
I padded across the deck to the hot tub and found Penn and Tyson were already there.
“I missed this,” I said as I climbed into the water. “And I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” Tyson said, at the same time as Penn said, “Come over here and let me show you how much I missed you.”
Ty shook his head at Penn, who smiled his incorrigible smile. But I was already wading through the water to them both, and I slipped in between them. The hot tub hadn’t been turned on in weeks and the water was still lukewarm, but I rapidly heated up when I was sandwiched between two shifters, trading steamy kisses with them both.
“Come here,” Tyson demanded, gripping my hips and pulling me over to straddle him.
“Someone still thinks he’s a king,” Penn teased him as I ground down on Tyson, feeling his cock press against me through his swimsuit and mine.
“Someone… is still an alpha,” Tyson shot back, losing some momentum along the way.