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October 14 - October 27, 2025
He’d stay here, let Pollux rip him to shreds, cut through his wings again and again, if it meant that the Asteri’s attention stayed away from her. If it bought her time to rally the force needed to take on these fuckers.
I thought maybe it was related to my training, but its shape was identical to the scar on your chest.” “So we’re obviously destined to be best friends,” Bryce teased.
“We’re a pack,” Ithan said to Tharion, Flynn, and Dec. “It’s what we do for each other.” None of them contradicted it. His heart strained.
But my mother, Theia, used the time she served the Daglan to learn all she could about their instruments of conquest. The Dread Trove, we called it in secret. The Mask, the Harp, the Crown, and the Horn.
“Oh, they’d warm up to me once they saw me swinging around the Starsword and remembered who and what I am.”
He’d never realized how much smaller she was than him. Or what the world might be like without her living in it.
“My point,” she said, leaning closer to her father, “is that I didn’t just learn about love from my mom. I learned about it from my dad, too. My true dad. My weak human dad who you’re so jealous of that you can’t stand it. He taught me to fight like Hel for the people I love.”
Because her home was no longer just a physical place, but a person, too.
And for Bryce, home was—and always would be—Hunt.
“You hand him over,” a female voice drawled from the open doorway, “and you’ll have a third queen pissed at you.” Tharion’s stomach bottomed out. Bryce Quinlan swept through the doorway and winked at the Ocean Queen. “Tharion serves me.”
“You’re my home, Hunt. Our love spans across stars and worlds, remember?” She smiled slightly. “I’ll always find you.”
“Telling her to shut up doesn’t end well for anyone. Trust me.”
“The Alphahole Club was getting too crowded for my liking.”
“I’d mind how you speak about my sister.”
“That the right leader makes all the difference.”
“And you saw me. For the first time, you saw me. I could talk to you as I hadn’t spoken to anyone. You reminded me that I was—I am—alive. I hadn’t felt that way in a very long time.”
“Now I don’t fucking care who you are, so long as you’re mine.” Her eyes shot to his, again full of surprise. “Because I’m yours, Day. I’m fucking yours.”
“I want you all the time.”
“I want to be the only one who gets to appreciate it from now on.”
“If you find that final piece of Theia’s power … if the cost of uniting the sword and knife is too much, Bryce Quinlan, then don’t do it. Choose life.” He glanced to Hunt. “Choose each other. I have lived with the alternative for millennia—the loss never gets easier to bear.”
She was already whole. What she had—who she was … it was enough. She’d always been enough to take on these bastards, power or no power. Starborn crap or no. She was enough.
The line will end with me, you fucking prick, Ruhn said into his father’s mind, because I yield my crown, my title, to the queen.
Their friends were instantly on their feet, Hunt putting a hand on Sathia’s back to steady her. Then they all came to stand, as one, behind Bryce and Ruhn. And she saw it, for a glimmering heartbeat. Not a world divided into Houses … but a world united.
“But right now,” Bryce said, “I’m Queen of the Valbaran Fae.” She nodded to the Autumn King’s body cooling on the ground, then smirked at Morven. “And of Avallen.”
At this time of year, it was tradition for many of the Den families to scatter into the countryside to enjoy the changing of the leaves and the crisp autumn mountains, so only a skeleton crew of packs remained.
“It’s my first mission with my girlfriend. I want to impress her.”
“But this time I have Bryce Adelaide Quinlan at my side.” She took his hand in hers, squeezing tightly. “I’ve got you, sweetheart,” she whispered to him, and his eyes flickered in recognition.
“I love you more than anything in this world—or any other.”
For the moment, it was just them—Bryce and Hunt. For the moment, it was only their souls, their bodies, and nothing else mattered. Just Hunt. And Just Bryce.
“You brought so much joy into my life, too, Ruhn.” He remembered, then, saying those words to her before she’d vanished through the Gate. You brought so much joy into my life, Bryce. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“If I don’t get the chance to tell you later … I love you.”
I love you. I fell in love with you in the depths of my soul, and it’s my soul that will find yours again in the next life.
“You signed your death warrant when you touched my sons,”
For the first time in her miserable existence, she let the world see her for what she was. Let herself see all that she was.
Would have done it all again, just for those memories.
“We shall build a new world atop their ashes.”
Maybe that day he’d first met Bryce, the gods had sent him there. Not to be some instrument of Hel, but because Urd knew that there would be a female who would be kind and selfless and brave, who would give everything for her city, for her planet. And that she would need someone to give everything back to her.
She had brought joy, and laughter, and love, had pried him free of that cold, dark existence and pulled him into the light. Her light. He wouldn’t let it be extinguished.
So many hands, so many powers, from almost every House. The friends they’d made were what mattered in the end. Not the enemies. Through love, all is possible.
“Whoever said normal isn’t complicated?” he countered. “All I know is that whatever tomorrow or next year or the next millennium has in store for this world, I want to face it at your side.”
They weren’t the Hind and a Crown Prince of the Fae. Weren’t Day and Night. Right then, there, they were simply Lidia and Ruhn. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“For Jelly Jubilee in the flesh?” Hunt grinned. “Anything.”
