The Bell of Freedom (King and human romance)✔

Epilogue

FIVE YEARS LATER

"I still feel like I'm doing this wrong," I say quietly, keeping my hand still as I lift the arrow to my line of sight.

Cain stands right behind me, his large hand trailing down my arm to keep me calm. He adjusts the position of the bow slightly, our fingers touch momentarily and that's suddenly all I can focus on. The heat flashes in my stomach, twisting with temptation and lust. I shake my head and I concentrate on the clueless deer in the short distance that is nibbling on grass.

"Steady," he whispers. "You've got this."

I suck in a breath, letting it out slowly as I keep the deer in my sights. Cain's hands fall to my waist and I release the arrow. Cain laughs out as the arrow hits a tree and the deer runs for its life through the woods. I turn and scowl at him.

"Maybe next time," he says.

"I definitely feel like I could hunt something if you weren't here to distract me," I groan.

He smiles down at me. "I don't know what you mean."

My scowl quickly turns into a flushed grin as he touches my face. His green eyes twitch with seduction and I push my lips to his, setting the bow aside as I wrap my hand around his shoulder, pinching him closer to me. I distance myself, looking up at the setting sun with a sigh.

"It's getting dark, we should head back," I say. "We'll have to go into the community tomorrow with our tails between our legs."

Cain's eyebrows furrow and he twists his head.

"It's an expression," I laugh, taking his hand and dragging him along.

"I wish you would write these expressions in a book so I can study them."

"I do, it's called my journal and you will find multiple phrases in there such as 'Cain is boring me to death and my survival instincts are kicking in.'

"Hm. That one I understand."

I grin up at him as he wraps his arm around me. Our cabin isn't far, we never travel too far because of leaving Emery for too long. Cain takes the bow from me and takes it into the small outhouse to lock it up, we always keep our weapons separate from the cabin but we have emergency rifles in our bedroom now.

Two years ago, a small group of scavengers broke in while we were asleep. At first we were alarmed and Cain was focused on beating them to death but I made him wait instead. We sat on the staircase and we listened to them raid our refrigerators and cupboards desperately. It was rare that scavengers ever came to this part of the valley and even more rare that they had a small child among them. The moment I heard the child's voice, we both knew that we had to help them rather than threaten them. So we revealed ourselves and told them that they could take whatever they wanted so long as they stayed the night and talked to us. They agreed and the next morning we took them down to the community. They've lived there ever since.

Despite the scavengers being harmless, we're still on high alert for break-ins which might not be. Cain is very tactical and inventive. He installed wires over the doors that when pulled open send a signal into our bedroom upstairs that set off a string of bell chimes. He even finished it while I was sleeping to deliberately test if it would wake me up. I almost killed him myself for that.

Apart from the incident two years ago, we have lived in peace for five whole years. Well, not complete peace. Our adopted daughter always found a way to keep us on our toes.

Emery sits at the kitchen table as I enter through the side door. I take my jacket off and drop it on the back of a chair as I look over her homework that she's been completing for the last few hours.