Epilogue Owen

" D o wizards and unicorns need to get married?" I asked, frustrated with all the hoopla Cary was tossing at me.

"Yes, they do, and you shouldn't be announcing you're a unicorn."

"I blocked the office when I came back to work. Jeez, I'm the freaking Re'em. I know basic shit," I said, causing Cary to chuckle.

I'd been antsy since Damian had proposed in a grand, spectacular way. We were in the Mt. Pleasant graveyard, the only place where the ghosts felt comfortable being with the witches, even though Damian had brokered a peace agreement between them over a year earlier.

We wanted to have a party with all our friends, but the ghosts still refused to let the witches into our home, saying it put the wards at risk, which, ironically, the witches had said as well. The compromise was when we wanted a party, we had it at the cemetery and at night when we could have privacy .

Our lives certainly were strange. Damian had surprised me, which as a unicorn, is freaking hard to do. I knew he had done something with Shadow to keep it a secret—something I'd given her a shit ton of grief about afterward.

Our sweet grandmother had passed away just a week after I'd met her. She smiled at me when I met her and said she'd waited for me, and I couldn't have been happier that at least before she'd passed on, I'd had the opportunity.

Since then, Shadow and I had grown closer. Shadow was, in every way, an environmentalist. I didn't know until our grandmother told me that she'd finished her Ph.D. in Environmental Studies. All her music was about saving the Earth.

Now that the dark forces were so determined to create an imbalance, our focus, both Shadow's and mine, had been on reversing the darkness created by humanity. Not all things dark came from the magical community.

If we didn't reverse the climate change and other horrors created by fossil fuels and polluting the oceans, there would be a much greater risk of destroying the balance of life on earth than anything Balthazar had tried to create. Luckily, my being an attorney and Shadow, an influential performer, we had significant impacts, even if they were subtle.

Life was busy as we all took to our duties. That didn't mean we weren't a close-knit family. Even the ghosts allowed Cary to visit now without getting pissy about it. On top of that, Cary introduced Cook, also known as Lucious, to some ghost they'd met on the Illinois prairie, and the two had hit it off.

Now, Lucious adored Cary, although he was still leery of him. Alexander, the old man ghost who allowed himself to revert to a younger version when he met Lucious, now lived together in our armory, next to the kitchen.

I'd never been in the room and hadn't even remembered it was there until I got home and felt it with my Re'em senses. Luckily, now that the worst of the dark forces that threatened us had disintegrated in their attack against me, there wasn't much need for weapons.

So, Damian had created a strange sort of dimensional pocket where the weapons were stored in case we needed them, freeing the armory for the two ghost lovers to have their own privacy. Which, at least to me, was entirely appropriate.

I allowed Cary, and now his accomplice, Mrs. Patterson, to dress me in what seemed like an outfit better suited for a freaking cosplay event at some con.

As I stared at myself in the mirror, the bright white, wildly out-of-date tuxedo looked pretty sweet on me. Begrudgingly, I admitted that.

The wedding was quite an event, but I refused to have my fucking wedding in a graveyard, so we rented a downtown cathedral, where luckily, the priest was a witch and a friend of Mr. Stages. The witches agreed to leave our ghost friends alone, so they, too, could attend. I think having both Shadow and me being rather insistent about that helped persuade them .

Shadow and Molly had refused to let Damian and me see each other before the event. It felt weird they were both so committed to a conventional wedding, considering theirs had been in the middle of an Iraqi desert, where Shadow had told us all that every Karkadann wedding had been held since the beginning of time.

As her brother and the Re'em, I knew that was total bullshit, but I didn't contradict her. It was a beautiful ceremony, convened by a powerful djinn, who I suspected was the real reason Shadow had wanted to get married there.

In the form of elephants, djinn had been the bane of Karkadanns existence throughout history, and now that the dark forces that plagued her were dealt with, I suspected Shadow wanted to play nice with the djinn to avoid any chaos their millennia-old feud might cause.

Regardless, here I was at my enormous wedding, with magical creatures on both the dark and light side, sitting in an enormous cathedral, with a powerful witch presiding. My life was so much it was hard to put words to how I felt.

Cary and Mrs. Patterson brushed down my tux as Mom wept and told me how handsome I was. Poor Mom had no clue so many powerful magical creatures surrounded her. Not that her status as a powerful human diminished her in any way. Mom was a force to be reckoned with, no matter what circles she ran in .

The moment I spotted Damian, I realized all we'd been through, the wizard, witches, abduction, vampire bites… all that'd happened had been worth it.

Damian's tux was similar to mine in style but dark blue. He was so handsome, and the tux accented his features perfectly. Dammit, Cary knew what he was doing.

Tears leaked from my eyes as Damien took my hand, and we walked down the aisle toward the altar. I froze for a moment. I'd thought Mr. Stages would perform the ceremony, but instead, the man who'd read my cards on the plane stood there. Mr. Stages stood next to Mrs. Patterson and Cary.

Damian had spotted him too and, in his telepathic way, told me he was the man who'd given him the wizard ring—the one who'd started the whole wizard quest.

It seemed appropriate that he was the officiant, considering he'd been the one to set us both on our combined life journeys. Apparently, he was going to make our life together official.

Rainbows danced around us, dark and light, as the crowd threw their magic toward us, gracing our union with their delight.

The moment we stopped in front of the altar, silence filled the cathedral, and it was just Damian and me in front of the strange card reader. Cary, Mr. Stages, and Mrs. Patterson stood to my side while Molly, Shadow, and Orville stood to his. Mr. Harrison held my mother's hand in the front row behind us .

"Do you take this wizard as your lawfully and magically wedded husband?" he asked me, and happy tears rolled from my eyes.

"From now until the end of eternity," I said, and a light lifted from my heart and hung above our heads.

Without glancing up, the officiant asked Damian the same thing, but this time, instead of wizard, he asked if he would take me, the magical creature I was, as his lawfully and magically wedded husband.

Damian squeezed my hand, and when he agreed, a bluish light came out of his chest and combined with mine.

We looked up as the lights entwined and then separated, blue and white, as they flowed onto our hands, forming identical bands.

"With these magical rings," the officiant said, his smile growing even wider, "I declare you mated in this life and beyond."

I kissed Damian as my heart filled with so much love for him I thought it might burst. We turned, the spell that'd encircled us fell, and we could hear the cheers filling the vast space.

I glanced at Mom, who appeared perplexed but happy. My intuition hit me hard as I realized there was more than just friendship between my mom and Mr. Harrison, but now wasn't the time to worry about my mother and boss's relationship. Today was about my new husband and mate.

Today was about the beauty of love and the power of happiness that a love like ours brought with it.