Gabriel turned his head slightly to look at his brother, crouched by the still-steaming ground, and sighed. "I hope so, Gid."
Gideon shook his head. "No, they're gone, the both of them. Strange, the Andrakkar jumping on that thing right after he threw you off. I don't guess we'll ever know why, since they melted right into the ground before we could do anything. Though it looked like the other one had the advantage." He shook his shaggy hair, the slash across his eye very stark in the moonlight. "I wouldn't want to be Lucien right now. But it's no less than he deserves."
"Maybe," Gabriel said, though in his heart he was no longer sure that was entirely true. But no matter what, it appeared to be a moot point. And right now all he wanted was his mate's arms, and some long-awaited peace.
Rowan looked at him, the fatigue on her exquisite face filling his heart with thoughts he would never have the words for. He wasn't a poetic man, nor particularly romantic either. But he would always give her what he had. And he had a feeling Rowan would think it was more than enough.
"I love you," he said softly, breathing the words against soft, porcelain skin.
"And I love you," she returned, his woman, his lover, his fire-breathing dragon. His mate.
"Then come on. Let's go home."
Epilogue
Rowan MacInnes an Morgaine reclined on a bed of silken pillows and cushions, enjoying the shade of the gently billowing canopy above her. She breathed in the sweetly scented Highland air, basking in the dappled sunlight filtered through the branches of an ancient oak tree as she relaxed upon her little oasis at the edge of Iargail's terrace. One hand curved protectively around the magnificent swell of her belly, which she had managed (with perhaps a little bit of help, she conceded) to swath in shimmering green fabric along with the rest of her for the day. The other hand was busy with what had lately become a favorite activity: directing.
The directee, however, was being less than accommodating.
"I really don't think you should put your thumb there," she commented, waggling a finger at him. That earned her not one, but three matching scowls, along with some colorful muttering she pretended not to have heard.
"He's still putting his thumb there." Carly MacInnes looked skeptically at Bastian, Gabriel, and Gideon as they labored over a small, simple wooden thing that looked like it might one day aspire to be a piece of furniture. "Are you sure the father has to make the cradle? Even if he's ..." She trailed off, wincing as Gabriel exploded in a torrent of curse words, shaking his wounded thumb as Gideon shoved his brother aside to have a go with his own manly expertise. Bastian regarded the misshapen structure with thoughtful intensity, then offered some tidbit of wisdom that earned him a rude comment from each of the brothers. "Kind of inept?" she finally finished. She then shot Rowan a sidelong glance that had them both dissolving into laughter.
"It was traditional once," Rowan replied, wiping at her eyes when she could finally speak again. "I think it's a lovely way to begin again, now that so many Pack have returned to the Noor."
"Yeah, no wonder you've escaped back to the Highlands for a little while," Carly smirked, her blue eyes twinkling as she propped herself on her elbow. "And this cradle-making thing is also a lovely way to keep entertained when your husband is always nipping at your heels otherwise, if I do say so myself." Her eyes narrowed playfully. "This wouldn't be revenge, would it?"
"No." Rowan paused, thinking about it, then qualified, "Mostly."
Rowan relaxed into the softness of the pillows behind her neck and back. She was lucky, she thought as she watched Gabriel continue to hammer away at the almost-cradle. So very lucky in so many ways. And she'd never dreamed that now, nine months to the day since they had driven the dragons out of the Carith Noor, life would have become so beautifully normal.
The Dyadd Morgaine was once again a tribe bursting with color and music, enhancing the forests with their magic as they traveled. Throughout the Noor there was merry laughter and conversation, the wild and beautiful trills of their songs carried on the warm air. There, on the other side ot the Stone, the silverwood trees had burst into lush and glittering bloom, and the gentle breeze brought the petals down around them in a gentle, fragrant rain of white. All as it should be, as she had always imagined it.
And more. Because she was not alone.
"I give up," growled the deep, delicious brogue into her ear, giving her a start. As she seemed to do more and more often as her time approached, she'd dozed off without realizing it. Rowan opened her eyes with a sleepy smile, gladly accepting the comfort as Gabriel sank in beside her and readjusted her position so that she now rested against his chest. Beside them, Gideon arranged himself at Carly's side and grabbed a tiny fruit from the loaded platter the women had been sharing, popping it in his mouth and dropping a playful wink at her.
Rowan grinned and winked back as her brother settled himself at her feet, closing his eyes with a relaxed sigh.
They had promised to come to the Carith Noor for the birth, Carly and Gideon, Duncan, and even Malcolm (who had insisted he only wanted to see Gabriel finally get his just desserts but got suspiciously teary every time he was anywhere near something remotely baby-related). It touched her deeply, the love and loyalty of the MacInnes Pack, and their willingness to make her and hers a part of all that. Since she and Gabriel had married, on the grounds of Iargail and then again beneath the majestic trees of her homeland, his family had become her own. And Carly, though she saw her only sporadically, had become as one of her own sisters.
Marriage to a MacInnes male, Rowan had decided, was a solid foundation for friendship all on its own. Sometimes, like when Gabriel had asked her for the hundredth time in an hour whether she thought she ought to just sit down, it was nice to know that elsewhere in the universe she had a one-woman support group who was bound to sympathize.
Though right at this moment the big, handsome man with the swollen thumb was making her feel like the luckiest woman alive, just by holding her in his arms. He did have a way about him.
What came out of his mouth, as always, was another matter entirely.
"I think, unless you want the baby to sleep on a board, that you might want to consider hiring someone else to build the cradle, love." He nuzzled her hair, sighing contentedly, and the familiar warmth he provoked in her suffused her. "I'm a big enough man to admit it. I've been defeated by carpentry. You may as well put me out of my misery."
Rowan felt him slip a hand against her belly. The baby's answering kick was hard enough to take her breath away, but after a minute Rowan threaded her fingers through Gabriel's with a contented smile. It had been a surprise, finding out that the lovemaking that had bonded them had also resulted in a rather life-altering side effect. Still, it was a welcome one. This child would know and be loved by her father, the first Dyim in a thousand years to be able to make that claim. Rowan hoped that she had her father's eyes, though personally she was rooting for another redhead.
Gabriel, apparently delusional, still thought he would somehow get a boy.
He had a better chance of her letting him off the hook about the cradle. And that wasn't happening either.
"You can't quit," she murmured. "The baby needs a bed. You could always ask Malachi ..."
"I'd rather hammer my finger a few hundred more times," Gabriel replied mildly, "but thanks for the suggestion. I'll get the hang of it. I'm not going to have our son sleeping in a basket."
"Daughter, you mean." Rowan opened one eye to fix Gabriel with a baleful stare before snuggling back up. His answering grin was typically unrepentant. Still, she wished he would take her advice about his cousin. It would do both of them some good to begin that healing.
Just a few days after Mordred's death, the battered gray Wolf that had once been Malachi MacInnes had dragged itself into camp and collapsed at her feet. He'd been freed, as she'd thought, at the moment of Mordred's passing. But it had taken weeks to nurse him back to a point where he could become a man again. Longer still to get him to say more than two words at a time, yet the dark, silent MacInnes kept more to himself than anything. There were deep wounds there that Rowan wasn't sure would ever heal. But he was clever with his hands, and had asked her privately to keep him busy ... solitary, if possible, but busy ... around the camp with whatever required attention.
Whatever he had been, whatever he had yet to become, Rowan knew this was his way of thanking her. And because of it, she wasn't afraid. Duncan had met privately with Malachi not long after he'd come, and whatever had passed between them, the Alpha had seemed satisfied. Gabriel and Gideon, she realized, were probably never going to accept him. There was too much bad blood there for her to ask her husband to forget. But Gabriel had never asked her to throw him out. He'd never questioned the wisdom of allowing Malachi to stay.
Just more of the thousand or so reasons she loved him so fiercely. He trusted her judgment. So today she would let the matter drop.
Still, she hoped that someday things might begin to improve between them. A fantasy, probably, but one never knew. The Goddess had set her on a strange path, and that had turned out wonderfully in the end.
Mostly wonderfully, she amended. Because Gabriel was going to ask her something silly, probably about whether she might like to go lie down. Again. She could feel him being overvigilant again, and made a point of keeping her eyes shut so he couldn't see her rolling them.
He'd been wonderful about standing aside while she kicked ass as a dragon, but her carrying their child in her womb seemed to have done strange things to his brain. He was suddenly suspicious of any activity that might somehow break either her or the baby, up to and including lifting, walking, laughing too hard, screaming, and/or not chewing her food well enough. Gabriel, Rowan had decided, would have been perfectly happy if she had taken a nine-month-long nap. Well, with frequent awakenings so that she could be ravished.
Somehow that had escaped his "do not" list. It was a good thing, or she would have been screaming a lot more, she thought with a curve of her lips. And the Goddess knew she did enough of it anyway, since the hormones had done some interesting things to her temper. Which in turn never failed to prick her husband's.
