Page 100 of Unwanted

Gary looked momentarily interested in the idea but then laughed, holding his hands up. “Whoa, whoa. I’m just voicing what others are thinking too. Now, I’m not saying the moral ramifications of the idea aren’t too extreme to actually put into practice, I’m just saying, you have to understand your enemy to fight them. Or, in this case, even find them.”

“Going by your comments, I’m worried more people will want to become them rather than fight them.”

Then the two people named Marcia and Gary, who must be very important for people to want to hear all their opinions, started talking about societies who fell to ruin and other things Jak tuned out because he was too busy sniffing Harper’s hair. She still smelled like his Harper but also like the river. He attempted to pull her closer again, and she came halfway up his lap. She looked back at him, and he gave her a bashful smile. She laughed softly, running her hand over his jaw.

Laurie switched off the TV. “Well, that’s probably enough of that. When do you two get out of here?”

“Hopefully any minute,” Harper said.

“I’m sure you’re tired and want to sleep. But if you’re hungry, I could make dinner… Oh, I’m sure you want to be alone.”

Between them, Harper squeezed his hand.

“Dinner with you and Mark would be good,” Jak said, meaning it.

Laurie smiled like she’d just caught the biggest fish in the river. No, no, like…like she was happy they wanted to be with her. “Wonderful.”

The door flung open, and someone else rushed inside their room. “Rylee,” Harper said, standing up and hugging her friend.

“Oh my God, I couldn’t believe it when I heard. Are you okay?” She stood back, looking at her the same way Laurie had.

Two men came in the room. “Hi, Jeff. Mr. Adams,” Harper said.

“Harper.” They both hugged her too and then turned to Jak and Laurie. Harper told them they were her friend Rylee and Rylee’s husband Jeff and her father, Mr. Adams. Then she pointed at Jak and said his name, and Laurie as well and everyone’s head moved back and forth, and they smiled. Introductions, he remembered the word for that from his grandfather. Good manners. Now they were acquainted.

Jak saw Rylee look at Harper and mouth oh my God before she glanced at Jak and away. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t think it was good manners.

“I’d love to have you all for dinner too if you’re available,” Laurie said, and Rylee took Harper’s hand in hers.

“We’d love that.”

Then everyone started talking at once, the way the birds did in the morning, happy to be alive for another sunrise and chitter-chattering to tell the whole forest about it. Or like…well, that was good enough for now. He couldn’t second-guess every thought in his head. Civilized thoughts would come naturally to him someday…probably.

Harper met Jak’s eyes, and they gentled. She smiled, and his brain went empty the way it did each time she looked at him that way. I love you, she mouthed. He mouthed it back. He loved her. He worshipped her. He cherished her. He would forever. And that was all.

That was all.

Epilogue

The fire crackled, shadows dancing on the library walls. Jak smiled, brought from his daze, as the scent of the woman he loved met his nose. “Hello, wife.”

Harper laughed softly, coming around the chair and taking a seat on his lap. “Will I ever be able to sneak up on you?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck and rubbing her cheek against his stubbly jaw.

He smiled on an exhaled breath, nuzzling into her touch. “Maybe.” He expected that his sense of smell would become…less once he’d been living in civilization for long enough and now that he didn’t depend on his senses for his survival.

“Hmm,” she hummed, kissing him softly. He ran his hand over the small swell of her stomach, their child cradled within the safety of her body. For the next five months anyway. Then it would be his job to protect them both. To make sure they were fed and warm and that their hearts were full. He never took that third part for granted after a lifetime of only being able to address physical needs. And often not even those. A shiver of gratitude moved through him. My family. The two words still made his breath catch with happiness.

Awe.

He and Harper married six months after they’d survived their jump from Amity Falls. No one had been able to convince him there was any reason to wait, though Agent—Mark—Gallagher had sat him down and given him a “man-to-man” talk about the “prudence of patience” and the “wisdom of waiting.” He respected Mark, but he wanted a ring on Harper’s finger. His ring, and that was all. He wanted everyone to know that she was his and he was hers. As soon as he’d learned that’s what people did when they were in love and wanted the world to know, he’d asked Harper immediately. And she’d said yes. He was overjoyed that she didn’t agree that it was prudent or wise to wait. They were married in the Gallaghers’ backyard under a summer sunset, surrounded by their new and old friends. Jak thought of them as their pack, and he didn’t deny himself the thought. The feeling. The way it made him feel connected. Maybe his senses would grow less, maybe not, but a part of him would always be wild—the boy who’d grown up alongside a wolf who he’d loved like a brother—and to deny that would be to deny Pup. To deny all that had brought him to the life he now lived. The life he loved with all his heart.

The baby had been unexpected, but since they’d both become used to the idea, they couldn’t stop smiling about it. They’d lie in bed at night just talking for hours about what he or she was going to be like, the things they wanted to teach their son or their daughter, the miracle of the life they’d created after they’d both cheated death more than once. And that tiny miracle made Jak want to learn everything he could about how to be a good father. A good pack leader. Mark and Laurie would help them. Jak and Harper had already asked if they would act as grandparents to their baby, and Laurie had cried, and Mark had pretended that he had something in his eye.

Jak had reached out to Almina Kavazovic—whom he couldn’t help still thinking of as Baka—just a few months earlier, and though Jak wasn’t sure what the future held as far as their relationship, he had needed to tell her he forgave her and that she had been with him during so many times of struggle and loneliness. She had been his strength and the reminder of his own. He had felt Harper’s mother—his priest, his Abbé Busoni—smiling down on him as he told her so.

Jak stared into the fire as Harper snuggled. The fireplace where he’d burned the bow-and-arrow set that he’d found in a corner of the attic after his grandfather had passed away, never recovering from his heart attack. The bow-and-arrow set that had been missing one arrow—the one used to kill Isaac Driscoll. But only he and Harper knew that.

His grandfather had given Jak a name. In return, he’d made sure his grandfather would keep his good one. If he hadn’t killed Driscoll, the program would have. With that assumption, the police had closed the case.

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