“On it,” Dan said, and he and a couple more shifters moved to their new charges. “Let’s go, assholes. You get to ride in the back of a van for a while.”
***
Connor could have shifted to heal the injuries instantly. But he hadn’t. At least not yet. Maybe because he wanted the Pack to see what he’d taken on, and what he could withstand. Or maybe he just wasn’t feeling the pain yet; power was a hell of an anesthetic.
“This won’t be the last challenge,” Gabriel said when we’d assembled in the family room again. “But you held your own, and you will again. An Apex must be strong to hold the Pack together.” Then he shifted his gaze to me. “An Apex’s mate must be equally strong. For they help hold the Apex together.” He grinned. “And nice kick.”
“Thank you. I was trained by the best.”
Gabriel snorted. “Of course you were, kiddo. Sullivans fight for what they care for. That includes you.” He turned away to talk to his brothers, and I looked at Connor, found him grinning hungrily at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Let’s get married.”
I watched him for a second, rolled my eyes. “You’re drunk on power.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, with the sexiest grin I’d ever seen. “And it feels so good. But that’s not why I asked you.”
I looked at him again, and his eyes seemed clear. “Are you serious?”
He considered that for a moment. “Yeah, I am. Marry me, Elisa.”
There were gasps and silences around the room as aunts and uncles realized their nephew, the heir to the North American Central Pack, and an Apex who’d just come into his power and beaten his first challenger, had proposed.
To a vampire.
And I didn’t really care what they thought. Because I knew who he was and who we were together. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get married.”
Connor squeezed me into a hug, and the room erupted into (mostly) cheers, and left me breathless. “I’ll spend the rest of my life,” he whispered, “proving that this is the best decision you’ve ever made.”
I leaned back, grinned at those brilliantly blue eyes. “Is that a dare?”
“It’s a promise,” he said with utter confidence.
EPILOGUE
For as long as he could remember, he’d been a survivor. Ignored by his father. Placed by his mother with the human who would raise him as one of her own, but always knowing he was something different. Something more. So he watched, listened, read.
And he waited.
Now he wore a yellow vest bright enough to singe the eyes and jeans that were worn and dirty at the knees. It was the boots that gave him away, or would have if anyone had been watching. They were new. Expensive. Unmarred by work and better suited to an urban hike than tossing dirt from the trench he stood in.
But no one looked. The vest bore the name of a Chicago construction company, a gift from a client, and the steel and plastic barriers around the hole he’d dug looked real enough. The trench was already six feet deep, and the shovel pinged when he hit something solid.
He crouched in the hole, brilliantly lit by the noon sun, and brushed dirt from the stone at his feet, then from the carvings that marked it.
He rose, dusted his hands, then flipped the shovel upside down, lifted his arms, and muttered in a language not spoken in a thousand years. With all the strength he could muster, supernatural and otherwise, he slammed metal against stone, sending chips into the air. Another murmur of sacred words, another strike.
“Third time’s the charm,” he said, sweat now dotting his brow, and made his final incantation.
The shovel’s blunt end became a metaphorical spear, making a jagged crack through the center of the rock. It broke apart with a deep and seemingly devastatedthrumthat sent a shockwave through the earth as magic was released, dissipated. He could feel the ward burning away, like old wicks consumed by fire.
What had been a Cornerstone was now rubble. And it was fucking exhilarating.
A definite flaw in the system, he thought, that taking out a Cornerstone could dismantle the entire thing. But they were called “Cornerstones” for a reason.
He dropped the shovel atop the now dead stone, then climbed from the hole. He pulled off the vest and tossed it in, too, then ran a hand through hair tousled by the release of magic. He shook it off, the dregs of that old spell, and felt his bones settle comfortably again, relieved of the itch of the city’s defenses.
Then he looked at the western horizon. The wave would travel, and they would know this wall was gone. They would know he had opened the door for them just a bit more.
Jonathan Black smiled as the sun passed overhead and the world moved one degree closer to dusk.
“Come in,” he murmured in that long-dead language to anyone who might hear. “I’ve prepared the way.”
A thousand miles away, a hundred miles away, they began their march toward Chicago—the city where demons were welcome once again.