by J. R. Ward
Rochelle craned around, her eyes lighting up. “No. Are you serious? You’re serious?!”
“We’re pregnant,” Helania said. “We just found out—”
As Rochelle let out a triumphant shout, the happy sound flushed an owl from its perch. “You’re pregnant!”
Rochelle all but tackled Helania in a hug, and then the female was squeezing the breath out of Boone. “I’m so happy for you guys! Oh, my God! The two of you are with young.”
“Thanks.” Boone stepped back. “But listen, there’s no ‘we’ here, okay? Helania’s the one who’s doing all the work. The whole ‘we’ thing is nuts. I’m the luckiest male on the planet, and she is carrying my young, but it’s her body that’s going through it, not mine.”
Rochelle threw her head back and laughed. “Laying down the law, I see. Fine. And I like your attitude, Boone.”
Helania linked her arm in his. “Yup, me, too. What can I say, he’s a keeper.”
“We’re going to name her Isobel,” he said. “If she’s a girl. And either way, we want you to hop on a human train with us. They do this thing—”
“It’s called godparents,” Helania finished. “We want you to be the godmother, no matter what kind we get.”
Rochelle’s gloved hands went to her cheeks. “You are making me cry right now.”
“Please?” Helania said. “You’re the closest tie I have to my sister, and I want you in our young’s life as an official member of the family.”
“Not that you aren’t already one,” Boone tacked on.
“Amen to that.” Helania glanced over at the clearing. “It’s why I wanted to tell you here. It’s like . . . Isobel’s with all of us, you know? Because if she were alive, we would have told the two of you at the same time. So what do you say?”
Rochelle’s answer was a group hug.
And really, that was the best affirmative there could be.
As Boone wrapped his arms around the two females who were laughing and crying at the same time, and as he thought about how he was making his own family, something above, in the night sky, got his attention.
Way up in the heavens, a brilliant shooting star was traveling in an arc . . . that made a perfect smile formation directly above them.
Lifting a hand, Boone waved to it as its trail faded and mouthed, Nice to meet you, Isobel.
Something told him it would not be the last time, and he was relieved by that. After all, death was not stronger than love, and the signs of angels were all around.
You just had to look for them . . . and know that big sisters always did their duty, even if it was from the Fade.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With so many thanks to the readers of the Black Dagger Brotherhood books! This has been a long, marvelous, exciting journey, and I can’t wait to see what happens next in this world we all love. I’d also like to thank Meg Ruley, Rebecca Scherer, and everyone at JRA, and Lauren McKenna, Jennifer Bergstrom, and the entire family at Gallery Books and Simon & Schuster.
To Team Waud, I love you all. Truly. And as always, everything I do is with love to, and adoration for, both my family of origin and of adoption.
Oh, and thank you to Naamah, my Writer Dog II, who works as hard as I do on my books!
More from the Author
Where Winter Finds You
The Wedding from Hell…
The Savior
Prisoner of Night
Consumed
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. R. Ward is the author of more than thirty novels, including those in her #1 New York Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series. There are more than fifteen million copies of her books in print worldwide, which have been published in twenty-six different countries around the world. She lives in the South with her family.
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Twitter: @JRWard1
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places, are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Love Conquers All, Inc.
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition August 2019
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Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco
Jacket design by Faceout Studio
Jacket images © 123rf; © Shutterstock
Author photograph © Jan Cobb
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-5011-9503-7
ISBN 978-1-9821-3171-5 (ebook)
