Page 135 of Midnight Sanctuary

She smiles softly. “Zena. For my sister.”

“That was easy.” I grin and stroke a fallen lock of hair away from her face.

Alyssa rests her head on my shoulder and looks towards the two incubators. “Zena and Katya Bugrov… wow. We havetwochildren, Uri.”

“We have a family.” I wrap my arm around her. “And I am never letting anything hurt any of you ever again.”

She sighs deeply and snuggles closer. “I know.”

Her confidence in me is everything. Her trust is everything. And I make a solemn vow to myself never to betray that trust again.

“I love you, Alyssa.”

She turns to me in shock. “What?” I ask, surprised by her reaction.

“You’ve never said that to me before.”

“Well… get used to it.”

She cups my face with the palm of her hand. “I love you, too, Uri Bugrov. It’s you and me now, okay? This is it.”

I disagree.

This isn’t “it.”

This iseverything.

EPILOGUE: ALYSSA

“You’resure?”

Emily nods reassuringly. “I wouldn’t be releasing this baby unless she was a hundred percent ready to leave the hospital. She doesn’t need us anymore, Alyssa. She needsyou.”

My bottom lip trembles as I reach for my little girl. At almost five months, Zena is still small. She’s about the same size Katya was at three months. But she’s a good little feeder and her lungs are a force to be reckoned with.

She slides into the crook of my arm and I breathe in that baby milk smell that clings to her rosy cheeks. She opens her dark brown eyes, fixes them on me, and gurgles softly before breaking into a gummy, happy smile as though she knows we’re going home today.

“Are you ready, my little warrior?” I ask, looking down at her. “Are you ready to get out of here? Start some adventures with your sister?” She gurgles again and I kiss her head. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Uri steps to my side with Katya in his arms. She’s got a chubby hand clinging to his shirt like she’s scared someone will try and rip her from him.

“Look who it is, Katya!” I exclaim quietly. “Your twin sister.”

Katya babbles excitedly.

I glance towards Emily. “Thank you so much. You can’t know how grateful we both are for everything you did for the girls. And for me, too.”

She waves away my gratitude. “Please. It was my job.”

“It was Grigory’s job, too, and he betrayed us,” Uri growls with an anger rippling in his undertone that I don’t think will ever go away.

Emily’s face sours the moment Grigory’s name is mentioned. “He was a sorry excuse for a doctor,” she says in a flat monotone. “Lucky for us, he’s no longer here.”

I still haven’t asked Uri what happened to Grigory. I figured he disappeared the same way Boris Sobakin did—and honestly? I didn’t care. After what each of those monsters tried to do to my girls, they deserved their ends. The details of how they left this earth aren’t important to me.

“Go on now,” Emily encourages. “Take her home. And don’t stress out about every little thing. Babies are resilient. They’re made to survive new parents. You can do this, Alyssa.”

I smile nervously as Uri steers me towards the door. I know deep down that I can do this. It’s just that sometimes, reality is a lot more no-holds-barred than the picture you create in your head. Fantasies of becoming a mother are always sunlit and breezy and smell nice. The truth of motherhood is… a little bit less polished.

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