Novels by Habi

CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE - EPILOGUE 2CHRISTINAI had always wanted a night wedding.Something about the idea of saying the most important words of my life under a sky full of stars felt right in a way I couldn't fully explain. So the whole morning was given over to getting ready, and the room was full of women, laughing and talking over each other, passing things back and forth, someone always doing something to someone else's hair.I hadn't seen Marcel since the night before, that was the rule we'd agreed on, no contact until I walked down the aisle, and I had underestimated how strange it would feel to wake up without him in the same building.One of the younger omegas was suggesting we make a run for it, disappear somewhere in the pack grounds and make Marcel come searching, and the whole room was laughing at this when the door burst open.A girl stood in the frame, chest heaving with eyes wide."You have to come see this," she said. "Right now, everyone"Nobody asked questions, we we

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR — EPILOGUECHRISTINA⋆｡°✩ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆ five months later ⋆˚⁺⋆｡°✩⋆After Pierce died, everything became smooth.That's the only way I know how to say it, it was not perfect, and not without grief, but smooth, just like the way a road becomes after the worst of the storm had passed and you can finally see where you're going again.Becca and Melissa took their mother's death hard at first, that was expected and it was right. Whatever Pierce had done, she was still their mother and they were allowed to mourn her. Marcel gave them the space to do that without judgment and slowly, over weeks that turned into months, they came around. They started showing up for dinners, started talking without the guardedness that grief puts around people, It helped that they'd been also given time to grieve their father too.We couldn't make it to Davina's son's naming ceremony and she understood without needing much explanation. Those early months were hectic in ways that were hard to des

CHAPTER NINETY-THREECHRISTINAI felt her move through me, this huge deep power coursing from the inside out. I felt Patricia before I even saw her.My name, called out in a voice I hadn't heard since Maxwell took me, warm and bright and familiar in the way only she had ever been.I turned.Patricia was standing a few feet away, and she was glowing, not the soft shimmer I remembered but something stronger, her white hair lit from within like moonlight concentrated into a single point. She looked more real than anything around me, more solid, more present.I couldn't speak for a second.She crossed to me and wrapped her arms around me and I held on."You're back," I said."I never left," she said simply. "I've been with you the whole time, you just couldn't reach me."I pulled back and looked at her face."I tried so many times," I said."I know." She smiled. "But you're ready now, that's the difference."“Am I?” I asked and she nodded.“You're ready Christina” she said softly but I

CHAPTER NINETY-TWOCHRISTINA"Dad."He didn't respond."Dad, please."I pressed my hands against the sides of his face, tilting it toward me, his eyes were half open and unfocused, there was so much blood, too much, spreading fast beneath his head across the floor."Someone help me!" I screamed. "Please, someone help!"And then he coughed.A wet, broken sound that sent relief crashing through me so hard I started crying before I could stop it."Okay," I said, my voice shaking badly. "Okay, you're okay, I'm going to get the doctor, just stay right there…."His hand found my wrist.Weak and barely any grip at all but it was enough to stop me."Don't," he said."Dad….""Christina." His voice was barely there. Just breath carrying sound. "Just stay." He said "You need help, you're bleeding, I have to….""Stay," he said again.I couldn't move, I couldn't leave him and I couldn't stop crying, I pressed his hand between both of mine and held on.He looked at me, the way he had when I firs

CHAPTER NINETY-ONECHRISTINAMy father stood up from his chair slowly and walked to the window.He stood there with his back to me, his hands loose at his sides, looking out at whatever was beyond the glass. "We had to leave again," he said. "After the massacre we went into hiding, found a remote part of the pack and stayed" He was quiet for a moment. "A few days passed, we thought maybe the worst of it was over.” He paused again."And then Damien called for Titiana again."I stayed very still.My father turned his head slightly but didn't fully turn around."I made mistakes," he said. "Ones I've had a long time to think about, I should have reported what Damien did to the hall of gods immediately, I should have sent that letter to Titiana after Veronica died, I should have done a hundred things differently." He exhaled slowly. "But I was unfocused and scattered, I kept thinking there was more time than there was."He stopped again."Dad," I said softly. "What happened to her?"H

CHAPTER NINETYCHRISTINA"If you knew you were spelled," I said carefully, "why didn't you do something about it?"My father was quiet for a moment, looking down at his hands."Two reasons," he said finally. "The first is that the spell, whatever it was, made it nearly impossible to act against it, the awareness of it would come and go, when I was with Titiana I could feel it clearly, like suddenly being able to see the walls of a room you'd been locked in but the moment I was away from her it would close back over me and I'd lose the thread of it." He shook his head slowly. "You can't fight something you can only see half the time.""And the second reason?"He exhaled. "Pierce was pregnant, my child was coming into the world and I couldn't walk away from that, whatever else was happening, whatever had been done to me, there was a baby who hadn't asked for any of it." He looked at me steadily. "I couldn't disappear on my own child.""So we kept seeing each other," he continued. "I