Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
I couldn’t believe it was him.
“I was sleeping,” he told me in that crackling, brand-new voice, “and I felt funny. I woke up, and I looked like you,” Duncan said, taking his time with every word. “I was coming to get you.”
I hugged him and hugged him, and I hugged him even more. He was talking! He was walking!
It wasn’t that I had ever given up hope that he’d turn into a two-legged boy—I didn’t care if he ever did. I had always just known how much easier his life would be if he did, without that crippling fear of being found out, of being able to live without the possibility of a stranger taking him looming constantly over our heads. This place had been a safe haven, and I’d never worried that anything would happen to him while he was here since everyone was so protective of the kids, but now….
I grabbed his cheeks. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he answered softly, his eyes sparkling. “I wasn’t scared.”
Beside us, Henri dropped to a knee, his eyes a little glassy, his smile a little funny. He mouthed wow, and I mouthed it right back, reaching out with my arm to clutch him.
And Duncan leaned away from me a little and looked at Henri too.
His smile… I would remember his smile forever. Would remember his words, this moment, everything from the way it smelled to the paint on the walls, the same way I would the night of our mating ceremony.
My Duncan Donut looked at Henri and whispered, “Hi, Dad.”
I fell back on my butt a moment before Henri scooted in even closer, one of those brawny arms capturing both of us in them. I’d heard his voice so many times by now, I could tell when something minor was bothering him, when he was trying not to laugh… but I wasn’t expecting the watery chuckle that came before a “Hi, son,” that had me sensing Duncan’s absolute joy in my own chest.
An explosion of “love” I knew better than almost anything.
Henri’s hand came up to cup Duncan’s head as he leaned toward him, and my boy and my mate touched their foreheads together. His voice was so throaty and thick. “How do you look just like your mom, huh?”
Their bond had grown slowly and organically over time, and it had become one of the greatest blessings in my life, one of those things I could have only hoped for. And if I’d had dreams, their relationship being what it was now, would have been one of them.
He was a real boy, and I couldn’t believe it.
A gasp had us all turning our heads to find Agnes in the hall. Her mouth was open in a way that made me think she’d learned it from me. “Duncan?” she squeaked.
Henri didn’t even get a chance to invite his Ladybug over.
Agnes Blackrock, the girl who a year ago would have still hesitated at a pile of hugs, threw herself at us. She was the greatest big sister to her siblings, and by example, Duncan had become the best big brother. It had been natural to them to love Shima and Nicolas, not just a little bit, but so fiercely, it took my breath away every time I saw them together.
They reminded me that love didn’t know the word DNA.
And the little girl who had been left by the people who should have been there for her at the start of her life, who didn’t trust easily, didn’t love easily, didn’t believe easily, hugged us just as tight as Henri did.
Epilogue
Once upon a December, in the middle of the most magical forest in North America, three women stood shoulder to shoulder under a brilliant full moon.
Each watched a small home surrounded by towering pines.
Through the smallest of the home’s windows, a blonde girl stood in her room, holding a cell phone to her face as she told her friend on the other line, “I need to go. My mom needs me.”
Three much bigger windows gave a clear view of a living area. In it was a tall, muscular man with his arm over the shoulders of a dark-haired woman plastered to his side. Her belly round in the way that only someone in her last trimester could be.
Across from them, on the floor, sat three other figures. A slim dark-haired boy and two much older white-haired men, holding Lego pieces up to the fan above their heads. On the couch beside them was a man with salt-and-pepper hair, one leg crossed over the other. A toddler sat on his right, drinking from a sippy cup, watching the group on the floor, and a slightly older child stood on the man’s other side, sticking a small finger in his ear.
The shortest of the three women made a soft sound in her throat as she watched the big man stroke his wife’s back with a loving hand. “They look happy,” she claimed in a wistful tone.