Page 102 of Storm of Stars
Zaffir’s eyes met mine, then flicked toward Ezra.
“I love you both,” he whispered.
My heart cracked wide open, all my love, all my happiness bleeding into this perfect moment.
“You know how I feel about both of you,” I gasped, still lost in the sensations of both of them stretching me so perfectly.
“Yeah,” Ezra said, a strained, but solemn sound. “I fucking love you both.”
Then Zaffir slammed into me, making us both groan. He thrust his hips with a speed that perfectly lit a fire under my skin. Ezra began thrusting his hips below me in time and I felt the shimmering stars above us as if they were in my veins.
Zaffir pinched my clit as he thrust into me and I cried out. I chanted his name, Ezra's name, the sound blending with our breathing and moans. The chorus was too much to handle. The love flowing between us was everything I could ever have wanted. I came hard, clamping around them both even as they continued fucking me.
My body lit with a red hot inferno. My skin tingled as the orgasm ebbed and settled into my weary bones. Zaffir and Ezra didn’t pause as they chased their own orgasms. When they finally came together, it was the most genuine relief.
The symphony of their groans of pleasure mixed with my sighs of pure bliss echoed through the room. And for a long moment, nobody spoke, nobody moved.
Finally, they slid out of me, leaving me feeling empty, but satisfied. I sank into the warmth of their bodies, surroundedby the soft rise and fall of breathing and the quiet hum of the planetarium’s stars above. We lay tangled together on the blanket, a mess of limbs and warmth.
About twenty minutes later, the door whispered open and Thorne and Briar slipped inside.
“You three look like you had fun,” Thorne teased, brushing a hand through my hair as he sank down on the blanket above my head, leaning back to watch the stars.
“Jax is passed out, sleeping soundly,” Briar said quietly as she settled between my legs, resting her head on my thigh.
Each of the four of them had a hand resting on me somehow, a palm brushing my hip, a hand resting over mine, a weight pressed lovingly to my leg. All of them tethering themselves to me. All of them making sure I felt every heartbeat of our family.
I smiled down at Briar, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead, and glanced at the rest of them. Zaffir, Ezra, Thorne, and Briar. My Wildguard. My heart.
Around us, the stars winked and shimmered across the dome. Shining on us, the way Thorne’s mother always promised it would. The world was still rebuilding. The battles weren’t over. There would be new trials, new heartbreaks, new victories waiting in the years beyond. But right here, surrounded by these hands, these beating hearts, this unshakable warmth, I felt certain of one thing.
After years of ruin and loss, after heartbreak upon heartbreak, after fighting for every breath we drew, we had reclaimed the one thing that had been lost for so long.
Hope.
EPILOGUE
Bex
Fifteen YearsLater
My fingers brushedthe cool stone in front of me, tracing the etched date like a familiar scar. I let my hand linger, grounding myself as best I could whenever I came here. Then, slowly, I laid the bouquet at the base of the headstone. Wildflowers, his favorite.
“Hey, Jax,” I whispered, my voice soft, barely more than a breath.
After the fall of Praxis, the world changed. It wasn’t instant. Nothing that deep-rooted ever is. But the moment their walls crumbled and their lies were exposed, something real began to take hold. Resources stopped being handed out like prizes. Healthcare was no longer a privilege, it became a right. And when the system finally opened its doors to everyone, Jax walked through them.
The diagnosis had come too early. The care had come too late. But even so, despite the years of neglect, the ignoredsymptoms, the way the system once deemed him not worth saving, he lived.
Eleven more years.
Elevenbeautiful, miraculous, hard-won years.
Years where he laughed. Sang. Sat at the kitchen table every morning with a cup of too-hot tea and a crooked grin. Years filled with stories, stargazing, telling stories in the dark. Years where he trulylived, no longer just surviving in the shadow of a broken system.
And when he finally passed, it wasn’t because Praxis let him slip through the cracks. It was because his body was ready. He was at peace. Surrounded by us. His family. His hand wrapped in mine, the sun low and golden in the sky.
Still… sometimes I wonder.
