“I love you, Adam Black,” Gabby breathed. “And, yes. Oh, abso-freaking-lutely yes!”

EPILOGUE

FIVE YEARS LATER

Gabby finished unloading the dishwasher and cocked her head, listening. The house was quiet; their two-year-old son Connor was already down for the night. Soon she would go upstairs, kiss their daughter, Tessa, good night, and lead her husband off to bed.

Professor Black.

She shook her head, smiling. Adam couldn’t look less like a professor, with his chiseled face and those sexy dark eyes and that long black hair, not to mention that rippling, powerful body. He looked more like . . . well, a Fae prince masquerading as a professor, and doing a rather shoddy job of it at that.

When he’d first told her that he intended to teach history at the university, she’d laughed. Too everyday, too plebeian, she’d thought. He’ll never do it.

He’d surprised her. But then, he often did.

He’d planned everything out so carefully. Before he’d petitioned the queen to make him human, he’d established a detailed human identity for himself as an extremely wealthy man with vast bank accounts and a thousand acres of prime land in the Highlands. A human identity complete with all the necessary paperwork and credentials to permit him to live a normal life in the human realm.

And when she’d gently scoffed at his announcement of his choice of career, he’d waved those credentials at her—transcripts from the top universities in the nation, no less (of course, he’d made himself brilliant)—and gone off and gotten himself a job.

He’d developed a reputation as a renegade in the field, with all kinds of controversial theories about things like who had built Newgrange and Stonehenge and the true origin of the Proto-Indo-European tongue.

Students had to register for his classes a year in advance.

And she, well, she had her dream job. She and Jay and Elizabeth had opened up their own law firm and just this year had finally begun pulling in the kinds of cases she’d always hoped to represent. Cases that mattered, that made a difference.

They’d begun a family immediately, neither of them had been willing to wait. Time was far too precious to them both.

And, oh, he made beautiful babies! There was Tessa, with black hair and green-gold eyes; Connor, with blond hair and dark eyes; and yet another on the way.

She pressed a palm to her abdomen, smiling. She loved being a mother. Adored being married to him. She doubted any woman had ever been more completely and unconditionally loved.

She knew her husband would never stray, so highly did he value that which he’d waited nearly six thousand years to know, so precious was it to him: love. She knew he would be there with her until the very end, that he would cherish each wrinkle, every line in her face, because in the final analysis they were not a negation of life but an affirmation of a life well lived. Proof positive of laughter and tears, of joy and grief, of passion, of living. Every facet of being human was amazing to him, each and every change of season a triumph, a taste of unbearable sweetness. Never had a man lived who savored life more.

Life was rich and full.

She couldn’t have asked for more.

Well . . . actually . . . she amended with a little inner flinch, she could have.

Though most of the time she looked at Adam and just felt awed and humbled that this big, wonderful man had given up so much to love her, sometimes she hated that he didn’t have a soul, and sometimes she wanted to hate God.

And she had a dream, a silly dream perhaps, but a dream to which she clung.

They would live to be a hundred, until long after their children and grandchildren were grown, and one day they would go to bed and lie down facing each other, and die like that, at the same moment, in each other’s arms.

And this was her dream: that maybe, just maybe, if she loved him hard enough and true enough and deep enough, and if she held on to him tightly enough as they died, she could take him with her wherever it was that souls went. And there she would do what was in her blood, what she now knew she’d been born for; she would stand before God, a brehon, and she would argue the greatest, the most important case of her life.

And she would win.

“I don’t understand, Daddy,” Tessa said. “Why did the rabbit have to lose his fur to be real?”

Adam closed the book, The Velveteen Rabbit, and glanced down at his daughter.

She was tucked in bed, blankets to her chin, staring up at him. His precious Tessa, with her oodles of shiny black ringlets tumbling around her chubby angelic face, with her quick mind, and incessant curiosity, and her daddy’s heart wrapped oh-so-snugly around her chubby little finger.