Page 88 of Mate Night Snack
"I came here thinking I was hunting ghosts," she said, her voice soft with wonder. "What I found was that sometimes the best mysteries aren't meant to be solved. They're meant to be lived."
The recording flowed easily, words spilling out like water from a spring. She talked about the power of choosing your own family, about finding home in people rather than places, about the courage it takes to let yourself be known completely by another person.
"The case that brought me here... it did get solved, eventually. But not in the way I expected, and not by me alone. It took a whole community, working together, refusing to let the past poison the present." She paused, thinking of Ashwin, of the ghostly seers finally at peace, of justice served not by law enforcement but by love and truth and the simple refusal to let fear win. "Some stories don't end with arrests or convictions. They end with healing. With closure. With the understanding that moving forward matters more than looking back."
She talked about her decision to stay in Hollow Oak, to build a life in a place most people would never find on any map. About the man she'd married, careful to keep his privacy intact while still conveying the depth of what they'd found together.
"So this is goodbye," she said finally, emotion making her voice thick. "Not to mysteries or stories or the search for truth, but to this particular way of telling them. I'll still be investigating, still be asking questions, still be fighting for the forgotten. But I'll be doing it from home now, surrounded by people who love me exactly as I am."
She signed off the way she always did, with her tagline about truth and justice and the power of refusing to give up. But this time, the words felt like a benediction rather than a promise, a grateful acknowledgment of battles fought and won rather than a declaration of war against the unknown.
When she emerged from her makeshift studio an hour later, show notes written and the episode uploaded to her hosting platform, she found Emmett waiting with fresh coffee and the kind of smile that made her knees weak.
"How'd it go?"
"Perfect." She accepted the mug gratefully, inhaling the rich aroma. "Exactly what it needed to be."
"Any regrets about closing that chapter?"
She considered the question seriously, looking around at the cabin that had become home, at the man who'd become her anchor, at the life they were building together one ordinary moment at a time.
"None," she said finally. "I've spent three years telling other people's stories. I think it's time I started living my own."
That afternoon, as they worked together to winterize the garden, Katniss felt the rightness of her decision settle into her bones like warmth from a fire. The podcast had been important, had helped people, had given voice to the voiceless. But it had also been a way of staying at arm's length from her own life, of observing rather than participating.
Now, with soil under her fingernails and Emmett's laughter in her ears, with the golden sigils humming contentedly beneath her skin and the mate bond singing in her chest, she understood the difference between telling stories and living them.
Some mysteries were meant to be solved.
Others were meant to be embraced.
And the very best ones, the ones that changed everything, were meant to be lived fully, completely, with all the joy and messiness and beautiful imperfection that real life could offer.
"What are you thinking about?" Emmett asked, following her gaze toward the forest where their story had begun.
"How perfect this is," she said simply. "How perfectly ordinary and perfectly extraordinary at the same time."
"That's life," he replied, pressing a kiss to her temple. "The magic's in the everyday moments as much as the big dramatic ones."
"I love our everyday moments."
"Good," he said, pulling her close. "Because we're going to have about fifty years' worth of them."
"Only fifty?"
"Well, maybe sixty if you eat your vegetables."
She laughed, the sound bright and free in the crisp autumn air, and realized that this was what happiness felt like. Not a destination to be reached, but a choice to be made, over and over, in the small moments that added up to a life.
She'd found her story at last.
And it was beautiful.
38
KATNISS
Spring had come to Hollow Oak, painting the mountains in shades of green that seemed too vibrant to be real. Katniss sat on the porch swing, laptop balanced on her knees, watching him tend the garden they'd expanded to include a whole section of herbs that Twyla had insisted were "essential for proper supernatural broadcasting."
