I lay on that kitchen floor for an indeterminate amount of time. All I knew was that when Vali finally lifted me into his arms, my limbs were numb and cold and my joints felt stiff.

“Where are you taking me?” I whispered into his chest, not really caring but feeling like I needed to say something.

“To bed,” he replied in a soft rumble. “It’s getting late, and that hard floor was making my ass fall asleep.”

Sighing, I turned my face into his chest and squeezed my eyes tight shut. I just wanted to go to sleep. Maybe when I woke up, this would all have been a horrible nightmare.

Vali placed me gently down on my huge, pastel purple bed and then tugged the blankets over me. My hands clutched at his shirt desperately, and I tugged him back down when he made to get up.

“Please don’t leave me,” I begged, my voice cracking into a sob.

Vali shushed me softly, peeling my fingers off of his clothing. “I’m not leaving, regina mea. Just taking my shoes off. I hate when people put shoes on the bed, don’t you?”

It didn’t seem like the sort of question that needed a response, so I just sucked in a shaking breath and watched through slitted eyelids as he removed his boots, then slid back under the blankets with me.

Once inside with me, he wrapped his huge arms around me and pulled me in close. There was something stupidly primal about how it felt to be encased in his arms at that moment. When my whole world was falling to shit around me, when I was more vulnerable than I’d ever been. Simply being wrapped in Vali’s huge hug brought me a certain sense of peace and safety.

We lay like that for ages. I had no tears left, but couldn’t force myself to sleep, no matter how badly I wished for it. Eventually, I knew I would need to talk about what had just happened.

“Regina?” Vali said in a soft voice while his fingers stroked through my hair, “I know how you must be feeling right now. To lose a parent, it’s unlike any other pain.” I sniffled into his chest but said nothing. He did know what it felt like, more so than anyone. “And I don’t know what you discussed with Austin today that had you coming back out of that shell you’d retreated into, but I need to say this now before things become worse. Before you let this break you.”

He paused again, his fingers trailing through my hair and down my back, then repeating. “So, I may not be the fluffy blanket you want right now, but maybe I’m what you need. You’ve had a rough run lately, Regina; I’m not disputing that at all. It fucking sucks. It sucks about Wesley. I might have only known the kid a few months, but fuck if I wasn’t already attached to that little nerd. More than that, it sucks about Jonathan. No one is ever going to try and tell you otherwise.” Fresh tears that I didn’t realize I was capable of pooled in my eyes and spilled down my face onto Vali’s shirt. “But here’s the hardest, shittiest part of all of it. You aren’t allowed the time to grieve like a normal person might. You don’t have the luxury to hide under your blankets and cry yourself to sleep for weeks on end, praying for the pain to go away. Not when you have people depending on you. Not when you have a world to save.”

No, it was what I needed to hear. Pain sucked balls—and not even in a nice way. I’d spent years being grateful to Jonathon. Then months bewildered and almost hating him. No, fuck that. I had hated him. Not telling me the truth was the worst damn decision he’d made.

“He made mistakes. He is a man,” Vali continued even when I said nothing in response. “I don’t forgive him for causing you any pain, regina mea; that is not for me. He was a man. He made his own decisions.”

And then some. He owned his shit. Tasha. The name tickled the back of my mind, the way he’d said it. I was like her. Well, that was better than being like Bridget, right?

Vali rubbed his chin against my hair. “Are you asleep?”

“No,” I answered, and it took real effort to push the word out. “Talk to me some more.” Then, even if I didn’t need to, I said, “Please.”

“Then I shall not lie to you and tell you this pain will ever be easy to bear; it will be a scar.”

I had scars.

“Scars are the tale of the road we have traveled.”

And the loves we’d lost. Yeah, not where I wanted to go, but I made myself listen. Safe in his arms, I let myself feel.

Even if it sucked.

I splashed ice cold water onto my face again, and the sounds of the guys returning filtered up from downstairs. Quickly I grabbed a hand towel to dry off my face. I’d splashed cold water over my face about ten times already in an attempt to wake my brain up and reduce the blotchy puffiness of crying.

Not that I cared if the guys saw me looking less than my best; I think I’d earned the right. But simply because it helped me to feel more human if I didn’t look like such a mess.

Eager to hear what had happened on Omega base, I yanked on a clean T-shirt and hurried through my bedroom. It was vacant already, so Vali must have heard them and headed downstairs too.

“Kitten.” River met me halfway up the stairs, and I froze, noticing the smear of blood on his white shirt. “Come with me; we have something to show you.”

His voice was grim, and my breathing sped up with anticipation. What could he possibly have to show me, unless they’d arrived in time to deliver Simon’s head on a platter? A girl could hope, huh?

Following River out onto our back porch, I saw my ex-friend zip-tied and looking revolting. Way more so than last time I’d seen him, it looked like the flesh was almost peeling off his face in patches. Not to mention the smell. “Simon!” I exclaimed.

“We wanted to finish him off when we found him,” Cole told me, scowling at the reanimated corpse of Simon like he was a giant pile of steaming shit. “But River suggested you should get final say on his fate.”

I glanced sharply between my guys and noted the resolute agreement on all of their faces. It was actually weirdly touching that they’d thought to allow me this act of closure.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked quietly, at a loss for what to say. “Just... declare he should die and then, what? Shoot him in the head? He’s already survived an avalanche; how do we know he won’t survive that?”

“Whatever you decide,” River told me in a calm voice, “we will ensure is done properly.”

Done properly sounded so ominous coming from him, but I knew what he meant. There would be no space for doubt if I chose to end Simon’s existence right then and there.

“Can’t we just... lock him up somewhere? Surely there must be some sort of prison designed for supernaturals?” And holy crap, shouldn’t that be the sort of thing I should know? Every day my lack of knowledge about the world I lived in was becoming more and more apparent.

“There is,” Austin nodded. “But there is one more problem.”

I raised my brows at him, but it was Caleb who replied.

“We needed to dispose of the mages who had been working with Simon,” he informed me, looking a bit pale. “You remember the necromancer who spoke out at the town hall?” I nodded. “He was fronting a group that was assisting Simon, providing golems for extra backup and magical assistance as required. We disabled some fifteen-odd spells from Omega HQ tonight.”

“Shit,” I breathed, eyeing up my former foster brother, who had yet to speak. “So how does that complicate this?” I waved my hand at Simon. “And where is his usual poisonous snark?”

“Well, that’s all part of the same thing. When we, er, dealt with the mages involved, we killed the necro who had reanimated Simon in the first place. Without that tether to a life magic, Simon physically can’t continue. He will slowly, as you can see, decompose. His ability to speak is already gone.” Caleb shrugged and didn’t look all that upset about it. “So, yeah. Locking him up is totally an option, but he will be dead by the end of the week anyway.”

“Huh.” I chewed my lip and pondered on this. “Do you think it would be particularly painful? Being trapped inside a rotting corpse?”

Yeah, Vali’s pep talk had really helped me. I mean, really fucking helped. But shit if this whole thing wasn’t going to leave me just a little messed up. The fact that I was actively seeking the worst punishment for Simon was a testament to how much I’d changed.

Cole snorted a little laugh; of course he would get where I was coming from. “Probably not as much as you’d hope, Vixen.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, staring back at Simon as he glared daggers at me.

“Would you like me to take care of this, regina mea?” Vali offered in a quiet but deadly voice. He was standing beside me, slightly closer to Simon, and I could already see his fingertips curling into dragon claws.

“Perhaps you might just tear him into little pieces, then let me eat him?” Sam suggested, slithering out of fuck only knew where. “That will guarantee he can’t come back again.”

“Gross, Sam,” I muttered in disgust. “He’s all decaying and shit.”

Sam rose up on his coils to flicker his tongue at Simon. “So? I’m a magical snake. I don’t care so long as it’s meat.”

Sucking in a breath to think this over, I gagged a little on the smell of decay. “Vali, he’s all yours. Just... do it on the lawn. So you don’t get zombie juice all over the outdoor furniture.”

My own callous tone shocked even me, but it was what it was. Simon—the Simon I’d known—was long gone. He certainly wasn’t this decaying thing standing on the porch.

“You sure?” Caleb asked, and I gave him a tight nod. Simon was long dead, and this was the most humane thing to do. Besides, he fucking deserved to die for killing Jonathan.

Swallowing back tears, I held my head high as Cole escorted what was left of Simon down onto the lawn and Vali quickly stripped to turn dragon. I’d made my choice, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to hide inside like a scared little girl while my men did the dirty work.

No, I’d chosen Simon’s fate, and I needed to see it through.

So I stood there on the veranda and didn’t so much as blink when Vali closed his huge jaws over Simon’s decaying head and tore it clean from his shoulders. I didn’t look away as the muscle and sinew shredded at an odd angle, sending one of his arms flying, even as the rest of his corpse dropped into a heap.

Vali then proceeded to torch the body with dragon fire, burning it until there was nothing left but ash on the scorched grass. Once that was done, he looked around and located the head, which he’d spat out, and repeated the procedure.

After there was a second pile of ash on the lawn, he swung his head around as though looking for something else, and I frowned.

“Uh... don’t tell me that Simon’s arm just got up and walked off on its own,” Caleb muttered, looking a bit green.

“Not on its own,” I replied, glaring at Sam who was slithering away from the scene of the crime with a distinctive looking bulge in his throat.

Caleb groaned as Sam joined us back on the veranda.

“What?” Sam hissed at us. “It tastes like chicken.”

It was that one, stupid statement from an asshole snake that finally cracked me. Hysterical laughter started bubbling out of me, and I couldn’t control it. I just kept laughing... until I wasn’t anymore. I couldn’t say at exactly what point my laughs turned to sobs, but the next thing I knew, River was carrying me inside while I bawled my eyes out onto his neck.

Who knew I had so many damn tears left inside me after all?

It was just as River started up the grand staircase with me in his arms that I felt it, that distinctive pop and shift of air pressure. But both twins were here, and they hadn’t said anything about leaving.

“Holy fucking dick cheese,” Caleb breathed from somewhere behind us, and River paused mid-step.

“Wesley?” Cole exclaimed, and I scrambled out of River’s arms to see what they were talking about.

Sure enough, standing in the middle of the foyer as though he’d just entered through the front door was a shaggy-haired older version of Wesley Reed.

“Wes?” I squeaked, hardly believing my own eyes. Was this some sort of fucked up grief delusion? But then the guys wouldn’t be seeing it too... would they?

River’s arm snaked around my waist, holding me back from getting any closer, and his muscles vibrated with tension.

“You’re dead, mate,” he said quietly, his tone laced with suspicion, and I noticed none of the other guys had moved to greet Wes. “You want to explain how this is possible? Or how you found us here?”

I frowned up at River, but understanding dawned when I glanced at everyone else’s wary expressions and defensive body language. They think this is a trap. Of course, that actually makes more sense than Wes coming back from the dead.

“I found you because I helped you pick out this fucking house over the internet and then drew up the contracts of sale for you. Besides, if you’re so worried I’m an imposter, just ask the question.” Wes arched a brow at River in a confident way that had me hesitating. That wasn’t the Wes I knew.

River gave a short nod. “What did you see last Tuesday?”

With a little grin Wesley replied with confidence, “A pink-and-green-striped chimpanzee drinking tea in the sun.”

At this nonsensical response, the tension dropped from River’s body, and he relaxed his hold on my waist. “Crow, you’d better have a damn good story for what the fuck happened.”

River sounded relieved, but I was confused as all hell.

“It’s a passphrase, Vixen,” Cole explained. “We have them set up for any situations where our team might be compromised. Each key word gives a different meaning if changed. For example, if Wes had responded with ‘a green-and-pink-spotted baboon drinking coffee under the moon’ we would have known that he was here under duress and that there were seven people both watching and listening.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding. “So… he gave the right phrase? It’s… him?” I glanced over at the him in question as I said this, feeling a bit rude for talking about him and not to him.

“No idea how,” Caleb muttered. “But yeah. That’s him.”

The missing member of our team gave me a shy smile—Wesley’s smile—and my shattered heart thumped heavily in my chest. I stumbled down the two steps we had just ascended and crossed the foyer to him, pausing when I got a foot or so away.

I scanned his face, desperately seeking some sort of confirmation or denial that he was who we thought he was. Perhaps he was some long lost older brother?

“Sweetheart,” he said softly, his blue eyes capturing my gaze as sure as any radar. “It’s me. I’m home, Kit.”

Hearing him speak, hearing him say my name and call me sweetheart...

“Wes,” I gasped, then threw a solid right hook at his scruffy jaw.

His head snapped back, and he stumbled, clutching his face, before frowning at me. “Ah, okay. Yeah, I guess I deserved that,” he groaned, rubbing his jaw. “You still hit pretty damn hard considering you’re human right now, sweetheart.”

“Shut up,” I whispered, throwing my arms around his neck and clinging to him for dear life while he hugged me back just as fiercely.

There were no logical explanations for how he was back. None. But I couldn’t care less. Wesley was back, my Wesley was back... Maybe this world wasn’t doomed, just yet.