by Haley Weir
“Yes,” Theo said. “Like laws. Ones that are mutually agreed upon and respect the rights of humans and shifters alike.”
“It’s a good idea,” the tavern keeper nodded, with the rest of the humans following suit.
They all sat at the table, drinking and talking and scribbling down their new laws and agreements onto parchment. In the morning, the new king and queen would look them over and order official proclamations, which would thereby make them legally binding. Holly smiled as she watched the exact manifestation of what she had always thought to be possible unfold before her.
While they were at the table, some of the young adults in both the humans and the shifters began to open up to each other and sit together to talk. They mingled, and the shifters showed the humans the beauty of the forest. Some of the younger women from the city took the hands of some of the younger shifters with the dark and mesmerizing eyes, who showed the girls the way that the stars looked between the branches of the trees, and how the water in the streams rippled in patterns that you could almost hear. The humans were mesmerized and enchanted by the shifters, and vice versa.
Holly looked from the table to see some of them, and she smiled when she realized that things such as her brother’s once-scorned relationship with a human would likely become a widely commonplace new norm. They would breed an entire new population and an entire new inclusive life into both the city and the forest.
The night carried on and instead of wanting to leave and go back home, the humans wanted to stay and spend the entire night in the forest along with the shifters. Some of the shifters were hesitant at first, but quickly embraced the idea of letting the celebration carry on into the wee hours of the morning as long as everyone was enjoying themselves. Never before had any of them thought such a night would be possible, and none of them wanted it to end. Even the royal family decided to stay throughout the night and join with the humans in carrying on the celebration. They all mused at how much better this was than the life they had been living in secrecy, and it seemed as if the walls of the castle had finally come down.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As much as Holly and Dex were both enjoying the celebration and ecstatic about what this new life would mean for them, Dex had only one thing on his mind and one vision that had held his eyes all night.
“Come with me,” he whispered into Holly’s ear.
They got up from the table and politely excused themselves. Cassandra gave her daughter a loving glance and a bit of a smirk as Holly walked away hand-in-hand with her new husband. Her mother knew the delight of love and passion and freedom, and she was filled with happiness to see her daughter have it all.
“Where are we going?” Holly asked as she walked alongside Dex.
“Home,” he smiled.
“Which home?” she laughed. “It seems that we have a few now.”
“True,” he grinned. “But this one will always be special to me because it was the very first place that I made love to you.”
When they reached his den, there was an overwhelming passion that had been within him all night that he could no longer resist. Holly sighed in pleasure as he softly kissed her neck and slid the thick ivory gown from her body, letting her long red-tinted hair fall down around her shoulders. She shivered in the cold and quickly helped Dex to remove his clothes as well, until their naked bodies pressed heat together as if they were meant to keep each other warm. He carried her into the den, and this time when they got inside, she crawled up onto him and lifted herself just high enough to be able to pull him beneath her. She held his swollen cock in her hands and wrapped her fingers around it, feeling the blood rushing through him and stroking him with a single upward sweep that made him groan. Then she touched him to her and slowly slid down over him until he pushed inside of her with enough heat and friction to light the forest on fire.
When he could go no deeper inside of her, she rolled her hips and began to move. Dex lifted his head to her breasts and kissed her as Holly cradled his head against her. Her fingers wrapped around in his hair, and his hands held tightly against her back. They rocked in a synchronous motion that escalated into an ecstatic pleasure. Dex lifted his head to put his mouth on hers, and as they kissed, their bodies unraveled around each other in a trembling mass of sensation that left them with residual waves of pleasure. For a moment afterward, they did not move. They looked into each other’s eyes, and Holly felt more fulfilled and happier than she had ever dreamt possible.
“That was the first time that we have made love as husband and wife, and as king and queen,” Dex said. “But that is not the first time that our souls have been together. I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel like we were always meant to find each other, and perhaps that is what led my solitary path here to this corner of the forest, and that corner of the tavern, for you to find me there.”
Holly kissed him softly and let her tongue trace the inside of his lips. Then, he gently laid her down beside him and pulled a soft, warm blanket over their spent bodies to rest against each other. He held her in his arms, and she trailed her fingers along the muscles of his chest.
“Do you think that they are expecting us to go back to the celebration tonight?” she asked.
“Do you want to?”
“No,” she laughed. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me from your arms tonight.”
“Well, that’s good,” Dex teased. “Because I haven’t had to fend off wild horses for you yet, and I think that I would prefer not to.”
“Speaking of fending off, do you think that any more hunters will emerge?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. But if they do, then I will take care of them. I will not leave your side now, my beautiful wife, unless you want me to. Besides, from the way that things appear in the forest tonight, there will be no more place in the kingdom for those extremists. Everyone here seems to want the same thing—peace and love and harmony. I even think that I saw some of the men and women making eyes at each other, at members of the opposite species. I don’t think there will be any more persecution of shifters in Grenvich or the surrounding forests again. I think that era has ended tonight.”
Holly smiled so widely that her cheeks hurt.
“I wish that my father could see this,” she said.
“Rubius?” Dex asked with confusion since Rubius was in the forest with all of them and saw everything that they were seeing.
“No,” Holly clarified. “My other father, King Aeron. This was his dream; this was the legacy that he wanted to see come to pass. He wanted shifters and humans to live together in peace. He would be so happy if he could see this now.”
“He can see it,” Dex said. “I am certain of it. I know that there are lives after this, and I am sure that he is looking into this world from the next, and he sees what you have done. He would be very proud of you, Holly.”
“I didn’t do this alone,” she said. “We all did.”
“Yes, that’s true. But you took the throne. Against all of the odds and threats and obstacles, you still took the throne. And this was your vision, just as it was his. Even when we all tried to talk you out of it. And when it happened, and the secret was exposed, you seized the moment and created this new future of peace. Your father’s wishes for the kingdom and the packs have been fulfilled.”
“Do you think that one day when we have a child, they will believe the stories we tell them?” Holly asked.
“A child?” Dex said. He seemed startled, and it made Holly worry for a moment.
“Don’t you want a child? And an heir?” she asked.
The mention of an heir startled him even more. Never in a million years had he expected to be a king, and now he would have an heir and perhaps even a legacy, which was quite a leap from being a solitary shifter without a pack.
“Of course I want a child,” he smiled. “I just still can’t believe how lucky I suddenly became to have you in my arms, and the promise of a child in the
future. And no, I don’t think that our child will believe the stories of all that has come to pass.”
Holly pouted a little at his answer.
“Why not? We will have so many stories to tell.”
“Because what child will believe the tale of a mother who united two entire species of people against all odds? And a father who was a recluse turned king? What child will believe the tale of an uncle who married a human and then turned his wife into a powerful shifter? And a set of not two, but three grandparents who fought battles both inside kingdoms and forests, against humans and rival wolf packs, all to ensure that their grandchildren would have a peaceful and united world to grow up and flourish in? And what child, will believe the story that on this very night, when the forest was lit up in sparkling lights and the sounds of merriment carried on the breeze, that this was perhaps the very night that they were conceived, right here inside this cozy den with the snow falling softly outside?”
Holly beamed with a joy-filled heart and tilted her head up to kiss her rogue-turned-king husband.
“Our child will believe those stories,” she said softly to him as her words brushed against his lips. “Because our child will grow up in this amazing new world that we have created, and he or she will be surrounded by these stories every day for the rest of forever. And they will be loved by all the humans in the kingdom and all the shifters in the forests, and mostly, of course, by the two of us. And do you want to know how the story will end each night as we tell it to our precious sleeping child?”
“Yes,” Dex said. “Tell me how the story will end.”
“It will end with the headstrong queen and the roguish shifter, the very same ones that couldn’t ever seem to conform to the rules around them, living happily ever after for the rest of their days.”
“And even when those days are done, they will live happily ever after in the lives after that.”
