37. Epilogue 1

Six Months Later

"Very well, Your Majesty." I bowed to the orc king and strode through his receiving room, my heels clicking on the marble flooring, and my skirt swirling around my calves.

As we walked, Katar squeezed my hand and leaned close to whisper. "That went well."

I shot him a smile and nodded, waiting to speak until after we'd left the receiving room. I was a wreck. Yes, I'd prepared my presentation and practiced it a billion times, and Katar had helped where he could, but I wasn't sure what the king would think about my idea.

Outside the receiving room, I collapsed on an orc-sized bench, my feet dangling in the air. Katar joined me, lifting me and placing me on his lap with my legs wrapping around his waist.

My orcling bump took up the area between our bellies. I was due in four months.

"The king said yes," I crowed up at Katar. "Yes!"

Katar's arms tightened around me. "I knew he would."

"You said that, and I tried to hold faith, but, well, I'm glad that part of the plan is over." I stiffened my spine like Helga Merryweather used to do when someone acted unruly in the library's front room. "You're now looking at the new head librarian of the king's private book collection on the surface. He's going to let me put them on display and let sociologists study them. Under my strict eye, however." She winked. "And with my own private investigator on hand, no one will dare touch the collection."

One might think the book collection was fifteen, maybe twenty books, but no. This king enjoyed old books almost as much as me, and he'd had a special building built to house them. It had three floors of stacks and more sliding ladders than the library back home.

My true home was wherever I could be with Katar, but we'd had a long talk after everything was wrapped up related to the ancient text. Katar wanted to open a PI business and hire other monsters, and I was eager to curate my own special collection. I'd given up my job at the library, but I planned to volunteer.

Vera had stepped into my shoes as head librarian and was doing an amazing job. She'd run an auction for the old books, making sure each one went to the right person, and she'd raised some money doing it.

I'd help her out whenever I could.

While the guards standing on either side of the enormous doors tried not to look like they were watching us instead of the long room in front of them, I curled my finger toward my mate. I couldn't wait to go to our temporary home in the hills, a large estate the king had given us as a mating present, and drag my love off to our bedroom.

We'd spend our vacation time here in the future.

I had a thing for Katar's horns and . . . well, you know.

We kissed, and it soon grew steamy inside the anteroom, so I eased away from his delicious mouth.

"Later, mate?" I said with a smile. "I've got some new ideas for how I can go wild." We'd become quite inventive when it came to setting my inner Bailey free, and we often challenged each other to surprise the other with something new.

"Maybe not later?" he growled, standing with me in his arms.

I wiggled my eyebrows. "I'm listening."

He leaned near my ear. "Care to strip everything off and run through the receiving room? We can meet up at the throne."

I smacked his arm, though gently. "You. Stop teasing me. We can't do that."

His lips curled around his tusks with his smile. "Who says I'm teasing?"

"We'd get into trouble."

Now, the guards really were listening in. The mouth of the one on the right had dropped open.

"I happen to know the king planned to leave the receiving room after your meeting," Katar said. "There's no one there, and you said you always wanted to sit on a throne. I thought, since you were sitting there, you could settle on me." He tugged something out of his back pocket and dangled handcuffs in front of my face. "And after, I thought we could try these out."

OMG, yessss. I pressed my face against his chest, speaking only for him. "We've got to do this, but how?"

"There's the mate I adore. As for that . . ." He gently lowered me to the floor and went over to speak with the guards.

They nodded and left.

Then Katar and I started ripping off our clothing.