Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. He was going to lose it. Ryder swallowed over and over, trying to get ahold of himself. And now the knife he was clutching in his hand made all the damn sense in the world. Wes had known.
Ryder flipped open the blade and handed it to her, hilt first. She frowned down at it, but as he pulled his shirt off, realization washed through her eyes. Cheeks rosy from crying, lips parted in question, long dark hair in waves down her shoulders, her body framed by the sunrise behind her, his mate had never looked more beautiful.
Hand steady, Lexi rested the blade under the mark Mason had made all those years ago. Carefully, she cut into his skin and dragged the blade all the way to the end of his collarbone, like she wanted the scar to be obvious. Like she wanted it to count. Good mate.
Warmth trickled down his chest, and it stung something fierce, but damn, it felt good to be claimed by her.
Lexi wiped the stained knife on her jeans and then closed it carefully. She sat in Ryder’s lap and rested her cheek against his, watching a sunrise he would never forget for as long as he lived.
He wouldn’t tell his mate about Weston’s prophecy. He wouldn’t tell her about their future child, or how fucking happy he was going to make her.
Wes was right. Ryder didn’t need prophecies.
He just needed Lexi.
Lexi had been working her magic from the first moment he saw her. She’d been slowly patching the hole in his heart, and now he didn’t feel the void at all. Fuck Robbie and everything he’d done. Ryder was the luckiest sonofabitch on the planet to have landed a dad like Mason, the mom he had, the crew he’d grown up in, and the crew he had now.
He was the luckiest to have found a woman who loved all of him, the good and the bad.
Lexi had asked him once for something real, for a feather.
He leaned in and sipped her lips just to remind her he loved her.
Lexi—his beautiful, sweet, driven, loyal Lexi—had earned every real piece of him.