Page 79 of Dark

I went to her side, holding her back as my brother took Ellie’s face in his hands, examining her thoughtfully. Ellie glared up at him, a full foot shorter and looking in that moment like she could totally kick his Tracer ass.

He smirked. “This might go a little easier if you stopped silently screaming how much you hate me.”

“Like that’s going to happen. You’re Kylo Ren. Complete with evil mind laser.”

“I’ve been called worse.” He dipped his head. “Think of something good.”

“Ethan,” Hayden choked out, fingernails digging into my arm. “Let me go—"

“I love you,” I whispered into her hair, wishing I’d been braver, that this of all moments didn’t have to be the first time she heard me say those words. And vowing then and there that I’d never hold back with her again. “You have to stay quiet. The more vivid her memories of this moment are, the stronger the emotional marker, the harder they are to rewrite.”

“I hate this.”

“I swear to you on my life, we will make sure she is okay. If it takes going down there every day, if we have to sit out in parking lots in your deathtrap Volvo, if I have to sit through a thousand rom coms while you two eat Thai food and paint each other’s nails, you will never lose your sister.”

Hayden shuddered in my arms.

Tears filled Ellie’s eyes. “Please don’t do this,” she whispered. “I’m not a danger to any of you.”

River didn’t blink. “I’m sorry.”

“I hate you.”

“They always do.”

And as the room looked on, Ellie collapsed in his arms.

Epilogue

Hayden

GOLDEN PRE-DAWN LIGHT WARMED THE CLIFFS overlooking Lake Austin and the copper red Pennybacker Bridge. The last stars were just fading from the night sky, winking out as wisps of high clouds overhead began to glow a brilliant pink. The wind stirred the hem of my vintage A-line dress, fluttering the skirt printed with tiny black skulls as I watched a lone swan skim the surface of the water.

It was Halloween. It was my birthday. And, oh yeah. One other thing. Ethan and I were getting married.

“Okay, one? I got up at 4 a.m. just to make you a Thin Mint triple-shot smoothie, which in retrospect I’m pretty sure should require a warning label.” Head pillowed in my lap, Ethan plucked at the strings of my ukulele. “And two, I let Cal put me into this suit. Three—"

I cut him off with a kiss, fingers twirling lazily through the dark strands of his hair. His eyes fluttered closed, face falling slack as dappled sunlight from the leaves overhead played across his features. And yes, in a dark gray suit and skinny tie, he totally looked hot enough to jump. Which was one more reason we’d nearly been late.

“You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

He smirked. “No way.”

We’d made the drive down from Blood Moon in the early hours of the morning, leaving time to sneak up the trail to one of Austin’s most famous overlooks so Ethan could sketch me as the sun rose. It wasn’t the only sketch he’d done in recent weeks. I’d even convinced him to pull out his painting supplies and reserve wall space in Dark for pieces to sell to tourists and locals. But some portraits, like the one of me laid out over our bed holding my guitar and wearing nothing but his shirt and my boots was definitely staying in the private sketchbook he kept in the nightstand.

Ethan smoothed a strand of hair away from my cheek. “I keep thinking I’ll blink and none of this will be real. That you won’t be real. That I can’t possibly deserve this. Deserve you.”

In answer, I lifted our intertwined fingers to my lips, his thumb stroking lightly over the E.K.C. tattooed onto my fourth finger. Just below it was a heart with a crooked line bisecting its center. Two broken halves fused whole. He’d gotten my initials tattooed in place of a ring as well, the small H.C. inked indelibly in gothic lettering just above a tiny violet. A promise that even if so many other people in my life had run, he was here to stay.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to be here every time you open your eyes.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. And through the bond, I felt his wolf arch in pleasure.

We’d celebrated our own private Halloween the night before, watching American Horror Story and making homemade lasagna with beef, spicy tomato sauce, parsley, fresh basil and fennel from the garden out at the ranch, and so many succulent layers of ricotta and parmesan cheese, Ethan practically had to hold me back from the oven while it baked. After garlic bread, salad with cold tomato wedges and tiramisu that had Violet so excited Ethan couldn’t keep himself from laughing as he tormented me one forkful at a time, we managed to keep our hands off each other long enough to carve the giant pumpkin that was currently sitting out on Dark’s counter. Its face depicted a spooky collage of cats, bats, a skeleton, and a ghost, with the words Just Married in an arc across a moonlit sky.

And okay, we might have taken a few make-out breaks.

My phone buzzed.