MasukCORMAC POV"Ten years, Bridie. I keep trying to properly understand how an entire decade passed since that evening on the porch, and I genuinely can't manage it."I said it, watching our daughter, fifteen now, help a group of visiting delegates understand the Weaving House's teaching methods with the same patient confidence her own mother had once shown a frightened boy in a cold Reaveswood forest."Time's rather good at that," Bridie said, laughing, more silver threading through her own dark hair now, though she wore it exactly as steadily as Elira had always worn her own.The Weaving House had grown into something neither of us could have fully imagined that first anxious winter, eleven regional branches now stretching across territories that had once seemed impossibly distant, hundreds of convergence children guided safely into adulthood by a network this family had built from nothing but a refusal to let fear decide a single frightened child's fate.Maren approached, radiant with
CORMAC POV"I now pronounce you properly, completely, officially married, and I would like the record to show this is the single largest gathering this family has ever assembled in one place."Elira's voice carried warm and clear across Ashgrove's largest grounds, packed with representatives from every territory this family's long history had ever touched, Cato and Senna standing radiant at the ceremony's centre.I watched the whole gathered crowd erupt into joyful celebration, and found myself, for one suspended moment, simply overwhelmed by the sheer scale of everyone present. Kian, greyer now but every bit as steady beside Elira as he'd apparently been since that very first terrible morning. Rhys and Sable, their own grown children scattered proudly through the crowd. Wren and Fraser, beaming at their son. Adrian and Freya, Marcus and Marisol, Priya and Edric, Silas and Selene, Callum and Marisela, Isla and Fingal, Kestra and Corvina, Ottilie and Sigrun, and dozens more names this
CORMAC POV"I find myself thinking about how many different kinds of happy endings this family's actually built, each one looking slightly different from the last, and every single one of them exactly right for the people who found it."I said it to Bridie on the Weaving House's familiar porch, the whole extended family gathered once more for an evening that had, somewhere along the long, winding way, become this family's favourite and most frequent kind of celebration."I think that's rather the whole point," Bridie said, leaning into me. "Nobody's love story looks quite the same as anyone else's. Elira and Kian, built from crisis and hard-won trust. Rhys and Sable, built from dreams and patient distance finally closed. You and me, built from a trial neither of us fully understood until we were standing inside it together. Now Cato and Senna, built from rescue work and genuine, steady partnership.""All different," I said, "and somehow, every single time, exactly the same underneath
CORMAC POV"I want to ask Senna properly. Not simply let it happen the way it's been happening, slowly, without either of us actually saying anything plainly yet. I just don't know how to start."Cato delivered the confession with visible nerves, considerably more uncertain than I'd ever seen him during an actual crisis."You start by saying it out loud," I said, echoing the same advice this family had offered itself across every chapter of its long, remarkable history. "Whatever you're afraid might go wrong by speaking plainly, I promise you, staying quiet costs far more in the end.""How did you know, with Bridie," Cato asked. "That it was actually real, and not simply gratitude for surviving something impossible together.""I didn't know, not completely," I admitted. "I simply decided I'd rather risk being wrong about something real than spend my whole life wondering what I'd lost by never finding out."Cato considered this, something resolute settling into his young, earnest featu
BRIDIE POV "She's grown so much since the last time I properly watched her work. Cormac, I don't think either of us fully appreciated how quickly these children actually grow once we're not the ones catching every single milestone personally anymore."I said it, watching Maren guide a younger convergence child through a simple breathing exercise with the same patient calm Torvin had once shown her, five years old and already carrying herself with quiet, easy authority.The garden pavilion was dappled with late-afternoon sun, honeyed light slanting through the flowering honeysuckle vines that wound up the cedar pillars. On the low rush matting, three-year-old Toby from the borderlands sat cross-legged, his small fists clenched tight as little sparks of copper light sputtered anxiously against his knuckles. Maren knelt opposite him, her honey-brown braids tied back with green ribbons, her own palms resting open and upturned in her lap. She wasn’t reaching out to suppress the light; she
CORMAC POV "The Reconciliation Order and the Northern Rescue Network formally establish joint response protocol, effective immediately, with Cato Voss and Senna Ashgrove-Kade named as founding liaisons between both organisations."Elira read the formal charter addendum to a smaller, warmer gathering than the Weaving House's usual ceremonies, mostly family this time, mostly quiet pride rather than formal spectacle.The afternoon sun slanted warm through the high arched windows of the library annex, dusting the worn oak floorboards and rows of bound territorial records in a soft, honey-toned haze. A tray of spiced elderberry cakes and freshly pressed pear cider sat on the corner table beside a sprawling vase of late-blooming mountain aster. There were no foreign delegates looking on with calculating eyes, no border wardens measuring political leverage—just the people who had bled to make this room possible."Ashgrove-Kade," Senna repeated, testing the appended name with visible surpris







